Chances of the UK having a Black PM summary.

In the UK parliament today there are only 13 black MPs compared to 650 white MPs. If this statistic was a true reflection of the UK population these would be double this number. A black child in born in the UK today is 12 times less likely to become Priminister compared to a white child born in the UK.  This comes after a BBC report realised in Novemeber 2016 ‘ Why a black child is 12 times less likely to become PM.’ David Harwood (actor) presented the study in a follow up documentary into investigating why there is this divide with in politics preventing children from different ethnic backgrounds getting the top job.  The investigation highlights are several reasons as to why .It states that 45% of black children are growing up in poverty , this means that they can fall behind in education.  This then results in only 4% of black students getting  4 A’s at A-level compared to 10% of white students. So the chances of a black child being born today and becoming primister are 1 in 17 million , however a white child chances are 1 in 1.4 million, but then if this child has gone through private education and got into a top university then there chance increase dramatically to 1 in 200,00. MPs who are currently in government tend to come from highly privileged backgrounds and have been through top end universities like Oxbridge and Cambridge. As a result they know each other and this is where rumours like the ‘old boys network’ come from. For example when David Carmon came into power he encouraged Michael Gove who he knew from university to become and MP, he also gave him a job in his cabinet. Gove later turned out to be a hated MP especially in education when he became secutary.  

There still seems to be a strong social divide in race , the brexit vote could be seen as an example of this. So it could be said that society need to re address its views or that the government should actually lead by example and start including people of a different gender and ethnicity in higher government.