The Conversation (0)
Kate Plummer
Sep 08, 2022
Liz Truss cabinet reshuffle: Who's in and who's out?
Indy
A lot has been made about the so-called diversity of Liz Truss's new cabinet.
This is because for the first time in history, none of the Great Offices of State - Prime Minister, chancellor, home secretary and foreign secretary - is held by a white man and Truss is the third female PM.
Truss,a white woman is PM, of course, and Kwasi Kwarteng is chancellor. James Cleverly, whose mother is from Sierra Leone, is foreign secretary and Suella Braverman, whose parents originate from India, is home secretary.
But race is just one measure of diversity. When it comes to gender equality, 35 per cent of the cabinet is female. 50 per cent of the wider population is female.
When it comes to private education, 68 per cent of the cabinet went to a fee-paying school. This contrasts the wider population, which is 93 per cent state-educated, the New Statesman reports.
And according to the Sutton Trust, the social mobility charity, the proportion of the current cabinet that is privately educated is twice that of Theresa May’s in 2016.
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“Class is a harder quality to measure and so less progress has been made in that area,” said Sunder Katwala, director of think-tank British Future, speaking to the Financial Times. “Within Westminster in particular, it is harder and harder to rise to the top for those without a degree and those from working-class backgrounds,” he said.
Here's what other people are making of the cabinet:
\u201cA black kid in poverty won\u2019t be inspired that it\u2019s a black Chancellor letting him go hungry.\n\nA brown mum being deported won\u2019t be comforted that it\u2019s a brown Home Secretary tearing her family apart.\n\n\u201cDiversity\u201d at the top means nothing if they\u2019re kicking those at the bottom.\u201d— Nadia Whittome MP (@Nadia Whittome MP) 1662571739
\u201cJust 7% of Brits are privately educated yet 74% of the new cabinet are privately educated. A two-tier education system creates a two-tier society. We'll hear a lot about diversity over the coming few days but diversity which doesn't account for social class is meaningless\u201d— Taj Ali (@Taj Ali) 1662541341
\u201cFolk (including @BBCr4today) are (rightly!) celebrating diversity in the 'great offices of state'. But it's maybe worth noting that Kwarteng, Cleverly, and Braverman were all privately-educated. Fact is that, nowadays, the real lack of diversity in Parliament is class-based.\u201d— Tim Bale (@Tim Bale) 1662529952
\u201cAs the Tories and the right wing press ask us to celebrate diversity on account of us now having a black Old Etonian chancellor this is the diversity graph that counts\u201d— ALASTAIR CAMPBELL (@ALASTAIR CAMPBELL) 1662618871
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