Britain’s Conservative Party, the country’s largest Opposition force, has elected its first Black leader. Kemi Badenoch, who was business secretary under the previous Conservative governments, is in fact the first Black leader of any major party in the United Kingdom. For a country with a long and painful legacy of racism and violence against minorities at home and in former colonies around the world, the election of Ms Badenoch is a powerful symbol of how the Conservative Party views itself today. The 44-year-old former software engineer is only the latest in a series of Britons of colour who have reached senior and influential positions in the party in recent years. The former prime minister, Rishi Sunak, is of Indian origin, as are the former home secretaries, Suella Braverman and Priti Patel. James Cleverly, who served as home secretary and then foreign secretary under Mr Sunak, had a Sierra Leonean mother. Yet, as the Tories try to recover from their worst-ever electoral performance — they received a drubbing in July from the Labour Party of Prime Minister Keir Starmer —
Ms Badenoch’s emergence as their leader also raises an important question with echoes around the world. What do ordinary people care more about: representation through symbolism or through policies?

To be clear, the power of symbolism can never be overstated in democracies with complex pasts. When India’s ruling party, for instance, chooses to not nominate a single Muslim candidate for major elections, it sends a message that it does not find any member from India’s second-largest faith capable of carrying forward its vision for the nation. If that exclusion is coupled with proactive acts and rhetoric targeted against a particular group, the lack of representation becomes an even more deliberate statement. But symbolism that is perceived as being empty has its own limitations. The Conservative Party under leaders with immigrant heritage unleashed plans to deport thousands of migrants and imposed economic policies that disproportionately hurt underprivileged communities of colour. In the United States of America, Vice-President Kamala Harris did not just lose the presidential race to Donald Trump this week but she also saw Black and Indian American votes drift away from the Democratic Party compared to four years ago. To these communities, the policies of the administration of President Joe Biden did not work and a figurehead that looked like them was not going to be enough to change that. That is a lesson not just for Ms Badenoch to keep in mind but for politicians around the world to heed.