With just days to go before the UK general election on Thursday, the new Parliament set to be voted in is expected to be the most diverse in Britain's history based on projections, and what experts believe has been a late surge in diversity from the country's main political parties.
Surprisingly, many candidates opted for Britain's Brexit Party, led by Nigel Farage—a far-right outfit pitching for a so-called hard exit from the European Union (EU). The key platform of the party, formed in January this year, is for a "clean break" from the 28-member economic bloc to trade on World Trade Organisation (WTO) norms and have been opposed to British Prime Minister Boris Johnson's deal as "unacceptable". The party is hawkish on immigration.
The last election in 2017 had thrown up 12 Indian-origin MPs, including the first female Sikh MP Preet Kaur Gill and the first turbaned Sikh MP Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi, both for the Labour Party.
Next week's election looks set for a hike on that number, with Labour's Navendru Mishra and Conservatives' Gagan Mohindra and Goan-origin Claire Coutinho among the frontrunners to clinch their party's strongholds.
"The next Parliament looks set to be our most-diverse ever, with more ethnic minority candidates likely to be elected whichever way the political pendulum swings on election night," says an analysis by the British Future think tank.
"Candidate selections have been very much a game of two halves with a late surge in selections to replace retiring MPs, and those who were standing down mitigating a decline in the proportion of non-white candidates selected in target seats," it notes.
The ethnic minority surge in the number of MPs is expected to include all the Indian-origin MPs from the last election, except Labour's Keith Vaz, who announced his resignation just ahead of the election in the wake of a sex scandal.
For the Tories, Priti Patel, Alok Sharma, Rishi Sunak, Shailesh Vara and Suella Braverman are set for a return. For the Labour Party, besides Gill and Dhesi, the others contesting so-called safe seats include Keith Vaz's sister Valerie Vaz, Lisa Nandy, Seema Malhotra and Virendra Sharma.
"Depending on the results, it's possible that one in 10 MPs will be from an ethnic minority background. That would be a first for our Parliament just a decade ago that figure was one in 40," says Sunder Katwala, Director of British Future.
Some of the other Indian-origin candidates in the running that are fighting more of an uphill battle include Sara Kumar, the Tory candidate for West Ham in London who is up against a strong Labour majority.
Another Tory, Sanjoy Sen, has been fielded in a Labour stronghold in Wales, with other fellow candidates such as Akaal Sidhu, Narinder Singh Sekhon, Anjana Patel, Seena Shah, Pam Gosal Bains, Bupen Dave, Jeet Bains, Kanwal Toor Gill, Gurjit Kaur Bains and Pavitar Kaur Mann also in a tough fight.
Labour's Kuldeep Sahota and Ranjeev Walia are in a similar boat, while Kishan Devani faces a fight in Montgomeryshire for the Liberal Democrats, alongside fellow candidates Anita Prabhakar, Dave Raval, Nitesh Dave and Meera Chadha Moynihan.
Among the candidates running for the Brexit party includes a UK-born doctor whose family originally hails from India before migrating to Kenya and then the UK.
"The UK has become the Jewel in the Crown of the European Raj," says Dr Kulvinder Singh Manik, who is contesting from Bradford South in northern England a Labour Party stronghold. "I want to stand up for my people, to emancipate them from this anti-democracy. We are living in a Marxist-Leninist attempt to overthrow our democracy," says Manik, who works in the state-funded National Health Service (NHS). The 47-year-old had voted to remain in the EU in the 2016 Referendum but has since changed his mind and says his family is fully behind his anti-Brexit stance.
Punjab-born Surjit Singh Duhre, contesting a similar Labour stronghold of Doncaster Central, claimed receiving death threats on the campaign trail and had to be convinced by party leader Farage not to quit the race. "I've been told I'm a racist, a traitor and a Judas just because I'm standing for the Brexit Party," says 64-year-old Duhre, a former Labour Party member.
Farage, previously the leader of the anti-EU UK Independence Party (UKIP), set up the Brexit Party earlier this year to field candidates for the European Parliament after the UK missed repeated Brexit deadlines since March last year. To address fears of splitting the pro-Brexit vote, the party had stayed off fielding candidates in Conservative Party strongholds and went after Opposition Labour and Liberal Democrats instead.
Ironically, despite being perceived as a party which is predominantly anti-immigration, it has managed to attract numerous candidates from Britain's immigrant communities. Among them is educationist Alka Sehgal Cuthbert, who had also contested the European Parliament elections earlier this year and is now fighting the Labour stronghold of East Ham in East London. "Wanting to conduct relationships with all countries on an equal footing, without privileging 27 EU member states, is not racist," she notes on the campaign trail. Among some of the other Indian-origin candidates who have been drawn into the Brexit Party fold around similar arguments include the likes of Sachin Sehgal, Parag Shah, Kailash Trivedi, Munish Sharma, Sudhir Sharma, Raj Singh Chaggar, Viral Parikh and Vishal Dilip Khatri.
-Inputs from PTI
