-Letter from Rt Hon David Cameron, MP-
Dear British Indian Hindu Community,
Thank you for all your letters congratulating me on the Olympics and the global showcase of diversity that was London, and your subsequent disappoint at the lack of representatives from your community in my newly shuffled Cabinet.
Please do understand the restrictions I am under. First, all eligible candidates have to be a member of my Party, the Conservative Party. Or they can be a Liberal Democrat, but, then you need to write to Nick Clegg, I am sure he’ll send his own letter of apology.
Second, whilst I can appoint from the Lords, they really have to be MPs. It helps if they were in the Shadow Cabinet or held some Shadow junior ministerial post – that means the 2010 intake does not qualify.
Now you tell me, who am I left with? Please name me names. Who have I overlooked? Who specifically from the criteria I have mentioned? Shailesh Vara for Home Secretary? It’s all very well complaining, but give me something to work with. At least I have given you Paul Singh Uppal MP– PPS to David Willetts in the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills. And Baroness Verma promoted without fuss or commotion to Under Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change – see not an ethnic or community post like poor Sayeeda – boy was Sayeeda unhappy.
Flood Conservative Party Headquarters with your application forms to be members of the Party, then MPs, then go out and campaign weekends and at elections door to door in the cold and the wet and be probed by journalists and hounded, and take orders from the whips and be told what to do, by them, whilst working on a wage well under what you could earn elsewhere, remembering all the time, how high will you really every get, my little Indian Obamas?
Thought so. You’d rather be wealthy, independent minded professionals and business owners – where you know thanks to the likes of Anshu Jain and Rajat Gupta (okay maybe less so Gupta) you are gods and legends and we politicians come asking you for help. Not so good at taking orders for low wages are you?
Of course Labour has more of your community as MPs – their target demographic earns more as an MP than in their day job. Whereas a typical Tory earns less as an MP.So your community if it agrees with Tory views, keeps its day job and doesn’t become Tory MPs – with very few exceptions.
I mean, can you put up with Andrew Mitchell’s tirades? If he’s willing to speak to a police officer with a machine gun like that, just imagine what he’d do to you, my unarmed peace-loving friend. We Brits did a bit of that to you in India, and you all went off in a huff, asking for independence.
You’re a strong wealthy able independent minded community. Why on earth would you want to be an MP on a pittance?
Maybe the power? Well, being an MP is the surest way to ensure you’ll have next to none of it. Want power – consider being a journalist, a businessman or a lawyer. Real power – be a social worker – truly improve society.
And yes it is important to participate in politics. And that’s my point. You don’t need to be in the Cabinet to be in politics. You can join a Party, attend policy meetings, write to your MP, keep the day job, do the thankless but fulfilling work of knocking on doors at election time, taking the elderly to polling stations, canvassing, (like un-self-publicising Alpesh has(!)) and make a difference that way – but without the glory sure. But then again you all do that already – I saw that from the Asian Achievers Awards. So if you still do want the glory and the adulation of a Cabinet post send me your sacrificial lamb for the rest of you. Send me your sons and daughters to Conservative Party Headquarters immediately.
Yours in apology,
Dave
(written on behalf of the Prime Minister, Rt Hon David Cameron MP, by the dishonourable Alpesh Patel)
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