Shortest serving PM in the UK ever

@vivify said
I think it's progress that no one blames the failures of Truss or May on gender. Just like it's progress that no one blames Thomas being a horrible Justice on his race. Nothing wrong with pointing that out.

Fair point. I do think it's a bit more complicated, though, than a simple matter of progress. The Tories know they have an electoral disadvantage among women and minorities, and I think they've made calculating decisions to put MPs in those categories into positions of high office. The Tories know, for instance, that Hindu Indians, who traditionally voted Labour, are beginning to waver (in part because Labour nowadays has an important support base among Muslim voters). Putting people like Rishi Sunak and Suella Braverman in ministerial posts is in part a way of coaxing that demographic bloc over to the Conservative side. The Tories won't admit they are playing identity politics, and would complain if Labour did something similar, but that is what they are doing.

Also worth noting that the Tories of ethnic minority origin are very often members of what had been "market dominant minorities" (so-called), either in their ancestral countries or elsewhere. Sunak, Braverman and Priti Patel are of all East African Asian heritage (South Asians had been a prosperous minority in Kenya and Uganda under British colonial rule). Kemi Badenoch's heritage is Yoruba, one of the two most prosperous ethnic groups in Nigeria, and notably successful in Britain (Yoruba speakers have among the highest average GCSE results in the UK).

A friend of mine was reading a newspaper article praising the diversity of the leadership contenders this summer. He signed and said, "Yes. But they're still all Tories."

@teinosuke said
Fair point. I do think it's a bit more complicated, though, than a simple matter of progress. The Tories know they have an electoral disadvantage among women and minorities, and I think they've made calculating decisions to put MPs in those categories into positions of high office.

Well that's normal, it's the same for U.S. politics. Both parties make a big show of courting women and minorities by putting them in high-profile positions. Amy Coney Barret and Ketanji Brown Jackson in SCOTUS, for example. I doubt women and minorities being used as political tools in western politics will change during our life times. The openness to women and minorities in top leadership positions is still a positive.

It is interesting that all three female PMs resigned, each term getting drastically shorter.

@vivify said
Politics in a democracy seem to be more about electability rather than merit.

You mean, in a two-party plutocracy.

@earl-of-trumps said
@vivify
Politics in a democracy seem to be more about electability rather than merit. You can be the smartest, most intelligent, most honest and upstanding person for the job but if you don't have an interesting personality, you won't get elected.
---------------------------

Agreed, and I think such people are what makes up the deep state/shadow gove ...[text shortened]...
Example: Henry Kissinger. Was Nixon's Secretary of State. And he has been in Washington ever since.

Please tell me you don't seriously believe Kissinger could've been elected president!?

@vivify said
It is interesting that all three female PMs resigned, each term getting drastically shorter.

No, it isn't. Don't be so astoundingly sexist.