David Blackburn

Cameron’s Warsi-related problems

David Cameron finds himself in the same boat as Dr Frankenstein. Baroness Warsi, a political creation designed to bring Toryism to sceptical ethnic minorities in which Cameron has invested heavily, may have to be neutralised as she is engulfed by two inquiries. Paul Goodman writes of Cameron and Warsi’s awkward relationship in today’s Telegraph, and he makes three observations borne of his experience working with Warsi during the last parliament. They are:

1) That responsibility had been ‘placed on the shoulders of a politician of no independent standing and with zero parliamentary experience.’
2) That Lady Warsi’s views on extremism aren’t Cameron’s.     
3) That Warsi’s position is impossible: ‘condemned to patrol the familiar territory of immigration control and integration policy without having real control of it.’

This last point is important because whoever succeeds Warsi (if indeed she is destroyed by present scandals, Goodman expects her to be) will inherit the same problem unless the leadership changes its approach to ethnic minority policy.





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