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“No prospect of a British Obama”

LONDON: While Americans were celebrating a new “post-racial” dawn, in Britain, a row erupted on Saturday over whether a person of Asian or African origin could ever become the Prime Minister after Head of the Equality and Human Rights Commission Trevor Phillips said U.S. President-elect Barack Obama would have struggled to make it to the top here because of “institutional racism” in the political system.

Mr. Phillips, who is of Caribbean origin and married to an Indian, said there was “systemic bias” against people from ethnic background that would prevent even someone as “brilliant” as Mr. Obama from achieving his full potential.

In outspoken remarks, first made in an interview to the Times and then repeated on BBC, Mr. Phillips, a former Labour chairman of the London Assembly, said the British political “machine” was resistant to change, reflected in the fact that there were only 15 non-white MPs in a 645-strong House of Commons.

“My point is that it’s very difficult for people who don’t fit a certain mould — and that is to do with gender, it’s to do with race and it’s to do with class — to find their way into the outer reaches of politics,” he said. Accusing political parties of paying lip-service to promoting the cause of ethnic minorities, Mr. Phillips said: “The parties and unions and think-tanks are all very happy to sign up to the general idea of advancing the cause of minorities but in practice they would like somebody else to do the business.”

His comments caused anger in the Labour Party with several black and Asian MPs questioning his view.

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