Being a baroness, Warisi sits in the House of Lords.

http://biographies.parliament.uk/parliament/default.asp?id=35329

There are 650 MPs in the House of Commons. Of these 142 are women and 27 are from ethnic minorities.

This is modestly encouraging, as there were only 15 MPs from ethnic minorities before the recent election.

http://www.parliament.uk/about/faqs/house-of-commons-faqs/members-faq-page2/

However analysis also shows that the new batch are more “socially exclusive” than before, more likely to have been educated privately and have a business background.

When newspapers can still write that the proportion of Conservative women MPs “soared” from 9% to 17%,there’s still some way to go.

Emilyanne: great minds obviously think alike. I have voted for the Lib Dems since I moved to England, and prior to that I was an SDLP voter. I’m not happy right now.

It did find that interesting about Blair’s early Cabinet though. I always thought he was a bit more progressive, but that might just have been the brilliant Mo Mowlam holding him hostage.

This Kira Cochrane article scares me further about the Tories’ priorities on womens’ issues

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/may/07/women-parliament-election-losses-wins

This ignoring of everyone who isn’t a white male of a certain class is not specific to the Tories and not new to British politics and I think it’s important to address that because actually not one of the three major parties gives a stuff about women. The difference is that the Tories don’t even bother pretending.

“Cardiff-born Mrs Gillan, 58, has served as shadow Welsh secretary since 2005 and will be the first woman in the job.

Former Welsh Secretary, Peter Hain, congratulated the Chesham and Amersham MP but asked why none of the 11 Tory and Lib Dem MPs in Wales were suitable.

Plaid Cymru said an appointment from outside Wales was a ‘throwback’.

Mr Hain said the decision to appoint a Welsh Secretary from an English constituency ‘will baffle and indeed anger many people in Wales’.

‘Far from representing the new politics that people want to see, this smacks of the bad old days.’ ”

And look at the photo for today’s story on BBConline re: the first Cameron Cabinet meeting:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/default.stm

So many white boys at Cameron’s table, literally – and so little true representative democracy. It is a DISGRACE.

Anyway great piece – I wanted to add that Katherine Viner has a piece in the Guardian today which also managed to infuriate me. Although ostensibly on the same subject it’s includes this par:

“Those delectable wives did get noticed, of course. Sarah Brown, Samantha Cameron and Miriam González Durántez got a brilliant press – because they are quiet, good-looking, well-dressed and best of all, know their place: as wives and mothers, in support of their powerful men. Herding their beautiful families, looking lush, standing pregnant on the threshold of No 10 like the Virgin Mary in Renaissance blue. The wives were the Madonnas, the good women; the women MPs the bad. All were silenced.”

Quite honestly I would love to know how Miriam Gonzalez Durantez, the head of international trade practice for one of the biggst multinational law firms in the UK and a woman who stated that she would not be campaigning as she had a job, feels about being forced into a box so that Viner can make her point.