Monday's debate may have changed people's mind on who to vote and how to vote. While Jeremy Corbyn faired consistently well, Prime Minister Theresa May also did not lag too far behind in impressing the viewers. A slick video with a foot-tapping song in Hindi called 'Theresa ke saath', and images of Prime Minister Theresa May wearing a sari and meeting Prime Minister Narendra Modi during her November 2016 visit to India, was released by the Conservative party on the weekend to woo the 1.5 mn Indians living in the UK.
This is going to be a unique and exciting election, while Mrs May's manifesto mainly addresses the mainstream voters, the number of Indian candidates for Conservative party has reduced from 17 in 2015 to 13 this year. The Labour party has maintained its numbers to 14 and very interestingly the Liberal Democrats, the third pole in British politics after Conservative and Labour, hoping to win the support of the large number of people who voted to remain in the European Union, have fielded in 14 Indian-origin candidates this election. On Tuesday morning though Mr Corbyn Labour party has also launched their Race and faith Manifesto, which outlines many areas where the ethnic minority suffers from inequalities. At present there are 41 non-white MPs elected to the House of Commons, 6.3% of all 650 MPs. If non-white population were represented proportionately in the House of Commons, there would be around 84 Black and Asian MPs.
However after Jeremy Corbyn’s sterling performance on Monday night, his shambolic interview on Tuesday morning where he could not give the cost of his signature childcare policy, Labour party has again dragged itself back to the starting point. Embarrisingly Barry Gardiner was left all at sea over his leader’s benefits policy after he seemingly contradicted Corbyn on whether benefits would be frozen or not under a Labour Government. Gardiner has also been criticised by the Indian voters, who claim he has not done enough for the community, despite being the Chairman for the Labour Friends of India for years.
The political parties have put Asian candidates against long term MPs in Asian populated areas, as well as Asian candidates against MPs of same ethnicity. A trend that was vaguely observed in former elections, is now very prominent. How many of those are winnable constituencies are not clear, but a think tank recently said that the number of British Asian MPs may increase marginally in this year's election. According to the think tank British Future, there is a chance that the Conservative party could win seats in unforeseen places. Both Labour and Tories and now the Lib Dems have repeatedly stressed their commitment to ensure wider ethnic minority representation in the Parliament, though they have been formerly criticised for fielding ethnic minority candidates only in so-called 'safe seats' rather than in 'marginal seats', which are difficult to win.
British Future have analysed trends that saw 10 British Asian candidates elected to Parliament in the 2015 election, and it is believed that Conservatives may increase their score slightly. However, there is likely to be a drop in the Labour party’s score which perhaps would lead to a total increase of one or two British Asian MPs only.
Currenty the House of Commons have five Indian origin MPs viz. Priti Patel, Alok Sharma, Shailesh Vara, Rishi Sunak and Suella Fernandes. This year the party has nominated Rahoul Bhansali, Samir Jassal, Ameet Jogia, Resham Kotecha, Reena Ranger, Meera Sonecha, Minesh Talati and Paul Uppal. While Samir is contesting the general election second time in a row, Paul Uppal used to be a MP from Wolverhampton South-West and lost his seat in the 2015 election. But Among the new Tory entries, Ameet Jogia, Paul Uppal Reena Ranger and Resham Kotecha have high possibilities of winning in their constituencies in Brent North, Wolverhampton South-West, Birmingham Hall Green and Coventry North-West respectively.
The Labour party has five Indian origin MPs- Keith Vaz, Valerie Vaz, Virendra Sharma, Seema Malhotra, Lisa Nandy and many other MPs of Pakistani and Bangladeshi origin.
The party has fielded former Lambeth Mayor Neeraj Patil, Kolkata boy Rohit Dasgupta, Hitesh Tailor, Navin Shah AM, Navendu Mishra, Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi, Kuldip Singh Sahota, Manjinder Kang and Preet Kaur Gill. If Dhesi and Gill win, they will be the first Sikhs to enter the House of Commons.
The Lib Dems have fielded 14 Indian origin candidates viz. Isabelle Parasram,Gitanjali Gordon, Shweta Kapadia, Anita Day, Harrish Bisnauthsing,Marisha Ray, Parmjit Singh, Anita Prabhakar, Reetendranath Banerji, Nigel Bakhai, Dave Raval, Victor Babu, Joe Naitta and Rabi Martins. Dadabhai Naoroji the first Indian MP of the party in its earlier incarnation as the Liberal Party. He was elected from Finsbury Central in 1892, but the party has struggled to enlist substantial support from the British Indian community ever since.
