Lamb to the slaughter.

[onebyone]

Perhaps an unwise effort to derail a conversation about tuition fees

Comments

[mejoff]

Might be fairer to look at their candiddates, rather than the ones the electorate went for?

[onebyone]

Possibly. They also have Navnit Dholakia in the Lords.

The criticism (originally from David Lammy, I think) that Lamb chose to make against Merton, though, is that no black students got in, not that no black students were made conditional offers. So I think I'm being fair to Lamb, if not to the Lib Dems' selection processes.

[onebyone]

For example, Labour and the Tories have opportunities to put candidates from under-represented demographics into selection lists for "safe" seats. There are close to no safe Lib Dem seats, in the sense of a constituency where they can change candidates and still be confident of victory. So their opportunity to foist a black lesbian candidate onto a broadly racist, sexist, homophobic electorate is anyway limited to their party lists in elections with PR. Presuming a racist, sexist, homophobic electorate, the Lib Dems should be expected to have a lower proportion of minority candidates even if their diversity efforts are just as strong as anyone else's.

I'm not trying to turn this into a new campaign against the Lib Dems, I think thing that on this occasion, Lamb's stone was thrown out of something that looks very like a glass house.

[onebyone]

proportion of minority candidates

Winners, I mean, not candidates.

Then if they take into account the candidate's chance of victory in the selection process, they'd have fewer candidates too.

[mejoff]

Thank you for not only taking, but massively elucidating on my point. I also take yours, the wording was a little ill thought out, but I still think he had a valid point. :)

[onebyone]

Indeed, if the Lib Dems want to talk Oxford accessibility on another day, I'm all ears.

[bateleur]

After reading your comment I tried typing "black liberal democrat" into Google.

The top hit was this Guardian article. :-)

(And the next two hits were for Peter Black. Who isn't.)