Liz Truss’s cabinet may be first without a White man in high office

Cleverly, whose mother hails from Sierra Leone — his father is from Wiltshire, about 90 miles outside London — has spoken publicly about being bullied as a mixed-race child and given talks at Conservative Party conferences about how the party can win support from Black voters. Kwarteng, whose parents migrated to Britain from Ghana, wrote a book examining the British Empire’s rule in the former colonies of Iraq, Kashmir, Myanmar, Sudan, Nigeria, and Hong Kong.

The diversity of Truss’s ministerial appointments won praise from some quarters, in a nation where Conservative Party members — about 0.3 percent of the U.K. population — are generally older, wealthier, 95 percent White and more to the right than the Britain as a whole. (Nearly 85 percent of people living in England and Wales identify as White, government data show.)

“The new cabinet is another reminder that people from all backgrounds can go far within the Tory party,” Samuel Kasumu, a former race affairs adviser to Johnson, told the Guardian newspaper.

Not everyone appeared convinced. A headline in Britain’s right-wing Daily Mail tabloid declared ruefully: Liz Truss puts finishing touches to diverse new government: No place for white men in great offices of state.

Her predecessor, Johnson, also had a fairly diverse senior ministerial lineup. Home Secretary Priti Patel was the first British member of parliament of Indian origin to take up that appointment, while the three chancellors during his premiership included two men of South Asian origin and one of Kurdish background. Truss was his foreign secretary.

Some pointed out that although ethnically diverse, Truss’s probable top appointees stem from the party’s right wing. Kwarteng had pushed for Britain to quickly leave the European Union while Braverman has said that schools may be able to legally ignore the preferred pronouns of gender nonconforming and transgender pupils.

The 47-year-old Truss promises to slash taxes and bolster borrowing to fund spending, even as inflation soars past 10 percent and the Bank of England forecasts a protracted recession by year’s end. Truss has also vowed to make reducing illegal migration a key priority, ensuring the continuation of a controversial policy to deport to Rwanda asylum seekers who entering the U.K. on small boats.

Liz Truss succeeds Boris Johnson as U.K. prime minister

The left-of-center opposition Labour Party has a more ethnically and gender diverse group of elected lawmakers, but they occupy a smaller proportion of the party’s highest posts.

Labour politician Shaista Aziz said on Twitter in response to news of Truss’s potential appointees that it is “not enough to be a Black or ethnic minority politician in this country or a cabinet member. That’s not what representation is about. That’s actually tokenism.”

In the run-up to the leadership vote, Aziz wrote an article panning the Conservatives for failing to represent the concerns of ordinary people.

“Despite all the talk of diversity and inclusion, the Tory candidates of colour and all those who entered the race support the party’s right-wing immigration policies, which include removing asylum seekers from the UK and flying them to Rwanda while their asylum applications are processed,” she wrote last month.

Labour lawmaker Marsha de Cordova said that although Truss’s cabinet is expected to be diverse “it will be the most right-wing in living memory, embracing a political agenda that will attack the rights of working people, especially minorities.”

William Booth and Karla Adam contributed to this report.