Baroness Sayeeda Warsi, here pictured with David Cameron, was the first Muslim to sit in cabinet. Photograph: Stefan Rousseau/PA
Source: The Guardian
By Hugh Muir
Diversity in the government, as in any workplace, is about valuing different worldviews – if minorities feel their opinions don’t matter, they will be tempted to take them elsewhere
“Better to have him inside the tent pissing out than outside the tent pissing in,” observed US president Lyndon B Johnson of J Edgar Hoover. In days and weeks to come, David Cameron may feel the same about Sayeeda Warsi. His turn of phrase will no doubt be more elegant.
With last week’s shock resignation, the former foreign office minister, the first Muslim to sit in cabinet, decisively exited the tent. Whether she will now present as his problem rather than part of his solution remains to be seen.
Warsi felt very strongly that the government’s response to the pounding and destruction in Gaza was inadequately robust, but there was no middle way to be reached. No change in policy, no change in tone; no tangible recognition of her position.
Former colleagues question her decision to quit at the point of a ceasefire, the suggestion being that she is skittish. More likely, it reveals a depth of frustration about what was being achieved, and the extent to which her own reputation, not to mention her view of herself, risked being degraded by remaining inside the tent to negligible effect.
Siren voices trot out the lines we always hear whenever a minority figure becomes a problem within a mainstream organisation. She wasn’t that good; an equal opportunity appointment. Plenty of testimony to the contrary. She’s no loss. She was in a non-job anyway. Such a non-job that the constituent parts have had to be distributed among four remaining ministers.
She brought diversity to government, not just because she is brown-skinned, northern and Muslim, but because her background and experiences gave her a different worldview. Diversity has to mean something other than different hues and genders around the board or cabinet table.
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