Watching the Conservative party conference on television during the week I’ve been struck by the sea of overwhelmingly white faces fulfilling the function of clapping seals. At Labour last week the audience too was largely white but at the Tory love fest in Manchester even more so. The one exception is their big gun Baroness Sayeeda Warsi who seems to taken on the role of the Tories’ prize Asian, who addressed delegates on Monday from centre stage. The baroness is best known for her role in teddy bear-gate a couple of years ago when an English language teacher in Sudan was saved from a lashing due to her diplomacy skills.

Her conference speech which trotted out the oft-made rightwing condemnation of multiculturalism has been well received by Conservative Home (no surprise there then) and even the Pickled Politics site yet despite Warsi’s high profile, cracking the ’Asian’ or even ’ethnic vote‘ at the next general election may be a tougher nut than the Tories reckon. Polling evidence has shown that new commonwealth immigrants take their electoral duties seriously with a higher turnout than the population at large. They have been stubbornly resistant to the Tories’ attempts to woo them.

Just as Labour should not make the mistake of taking Asian voters for granted, the Tories cannot expect those with subcontinental origins to roll over for them – particularly when judged on their past actions relating to race relations matters. It was the Tories own Theresa May who dubbed them as the ‘nasty party’. Their record on equalities legislation has been poor in government and their own party. After all Warsi herself only ended up in the Lords after repeatedly failing to be selected for a safe Conservative seat. Stuck-in-the-past Tory associations had to have the whole A-list exercise imposed on them when they refused to budge from selecting anyone who didn’t look like what most people’s idea of a Tory MP will. This issue appeared to concern Iain Dale in this interview when he asks one of the new breed of activists Shazia Awan how she feels about suggestions by some 'that you're...being pushed into things a little bit too quickly' (for example see line of questioning at 2.47).

There probably will be more brown faces on the Tory benches after the election, whether the Conservatives win or not. This cannot disguise the fact that the party have to date been stubbornly slow to catch up with Labour’s number of BME representatives or proud reputation in enacting all the major race relations legislation of this country’s history. It was the late Robin Cook who indirectly articulated how accepted and normalised Asian culture had become in the UK when he declared that chicken tikka massala had become Britain’s national dish. His brand of thoughtful pluralism is much missed and the Tories in power are a truly frightening prospect as their conference has proved. If proof were needed let’s not forget that this is a party whose idea of defending persecuted minorities is Boris Johnson bigging up bankers in his conference speech – or was that last word rhyming slang for something else?

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