Lamb to the slaughter.

[onebyone]

Perhaps an unwise effort to derail a conversation about tuition fees

Comments

[mejoff]

Might be fairer to look at their candiddates, rather than the ones the electorate went for?

[onebyone]

Possibly. They also have Navnit Dholakia in the Lords.

The criticism (originally from David Lammy, I think) that Lamb chose to make against Merton, though, is that no black students got in, not that no black students were made conditional offers. So I think I'm being fair to Lamb, if not to the Lib Dems' selection processes.

[onebyone]

For example, Labour and the Tories have opportunities to put candidates from under-represented demographics into selection lists for "safe" seats. There are close to no safe Lib Dem seats, in the sense of a constituency where they can change candidates and still be confident of victory. So their opportunity to foist a black lesbian candidate onto a broadly racist, sexist, homophobic electorate is anyway limited to their party lists in elections with PR. Presuming a racist, sexist, homophobic electorate, the Lib Dems should be expected to have a lower proportion of minority candidates even if their diversity efforts are just as strong as anyone else's.

I'm not trying to turn this into a new campaign against the Lib Dems, I think thing that on this occasion, Lamb's stone was thrown out of something that looks very like a glass house.

[onebyone]

proportion of minority candidates

Winners, I mean, not candidates.

Then if they take into account the candidate's chance of victory in the selection process, they'd have fewer candidates too.

[mrlloyd]

The black thing is wrong btw. It's one english student of Carribean descent, or some such. There's every chance there are black americans, africans and so on taking undergrad courses with them. Good piece in the Guardian the other day suggested the issue was much more about class than race.

But yes, the Lib Dem's inability to pick candidates who are anything other than white is a scandal of a similar nature.

[mrlloyd]

Ah sorry, I completely misread what he was saying about black admissions. Got it all mixed up with another statistic (only one black english student of carribean descent being accepted this year). As for Merton - who knows.

[onebyone]

the issue was much more about class than race

I haven't seen the number-crunching, but that's certainly my instinct, that the racial disparity is largely or even entirely a consequence of the wider accessibility problems at Oxford and Cambridge.

[bateleur]

Thinking about which stats we ought to be looking at it occurs to me to wonder if the Conservatives and other socially regressive groups have tried the strategy of deliberately enacting policies which mess up statistics.

For example, create a scholarship scheme with a behind-closed-doors acceptance procedure and use it to select candidates from particular demographics favoured by the press and the opposition for analysis purposes. Once it's no longer possible for your political opponents to describe the unsolved 99% of the problem using media-friendly terms like "poor people" and "black people" you've basically won.

[onebyone]

It means you shouldn't do so as a cheap distraction from what you've actually been asked

[onebyone]

Thanks. I agree with your point too, I certainly don't want to assume that because a Lib Dem levelled the charge it can be ignored. I'm sure if he put his mind to it, he could present a more detailed criticism with better stats to back it.