Sir, The comments made by Trevor Phillips regarding how Barack Obama’s career would have progressed in the Labour Party were he a British citizen (report, Nov 8) are so off the mark that it’s ridiculous. Labour has more elected representatives from ethnic minority backgrounds than any other political party in the UK. I suspect that Mr Phillips carries the baggage familiar with his generation that a black man has no place in politics. This self-defeating attitude has no place in our world and, just like Jesse Jackson, he suddenly finds his place in the world challenged by a new generation who refuse to be defined by their race but by their politics. Mr Phillips is now a part of the Establishment he so often criticises — this is a man who counts the Prince of Wales as one of his closest friends.

As a mixed race (Scottish-Kenyan) British citizen I find the time has never been better for people of colour to go into politics. I am not a minority, I am part of the majority.

John Carruthers

London W12

Sir, Trevor Phillips wants the House of Commons to “accurately reflect the make-up of the population”, implying that the number of ethnic minority MPs in the House of Commons should somehow correspond to the size of their population in Britain. This is a spurious argument.

MPs represent constituents, not ethnic groups. You do not need a black MP to represent a black population. Enoch Powell made the point when — his controversial views on race and immigration notwithstanding — he vigorously defended Asian constituents facing deportation in the 1960s.

Moreover, Britain’s ethnic minorities are not a heterogeneous group. They consist of many racial and religious variants, some with deep-rooted intercommunal rivalries. Any attempt to link their presence in the House of Commons to what percentage they form of the population would open up a Pandora’s box of sectarianism and communalism in British politics.

Randhir Singh Bains

Gants Hill, Essex

Sir, Britain may not have had a black prime minister, but it has had a woman and a Jew (even if baptised). In Gordon Brown, it has the first university-educated PM who was not at Oxbridge, and there is a distinct possibility that it will soon have one from the Bullingdon Club, regarded in my undergraduate days as a group of barely human Hooray Henrys.

Professor Bryan Reuben

London South Bank University

Sir, Trevor Phillips holds that an American-style Great Black Hope could not emerge here because of racial prejudice. A far more likely reason is the paucity of potential right across the political spectrum.

Pete Taylor

Virginia Water, Surrey

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