British business should make room at the top for ethnic minorities — or else!

We all love the sight of snowy peaks. In the realm of diversity, however, they have a very different — and sinister — significance. There, such peaks indicate that the higher reaches of an

organisation are populated exclusively by white people. This week, Trevor Phillips used the term about the senior management of British business. Of the 297 chairmen, chief executives and

chief financial officers of FTSE 100 companies, not a single one is now black. Diversity be damned — in the boardroom progress has gone into reverse.

Nor are Asians and other minorities doing much better. According to research by the Green Park consultancy, which monitors diversity among senior executives, just 3.4 per cent of those who

run the UK’s biggest firms come from ethnic minorities. This proportion has remained static for six years, far below the 13 per cent of the population who identified as belonging to

minorities or mixed race in the 2011 census — a figure that has undoubtedly risen in the past decade. 

Phillips, who chairs Green Park, has plenty of experience in this field as a former head of the Commission for Racial Equality (now the Equality and Human Rights Commission). He is no zealot

for political correctness, having himself been suspended from the Labour Party amid bogus allegations of Islamophobia. But even Phillips, who is black himself, admitted that he was

“astonished” by the failure of British business to make the slightest effort to recruit senior executives from a multiracial background. 

He explains that ambitious young men and women of colour encounter a “vanilla boys’ club” at the top, try to break through the glass ceiling, but eventually give up. They go to America or

other countries where there are fewer barriers to entry. A good example is Sajid Javid, the former Chancellor, who chose Wall Street over the City to make his fortune. Many, unlike Javid,

never return.

It should go without saying that British firms who preserve their snowy peaks are thereby denying themselves the best talent available. But they are also increasingly out of step with the

rest of society. In the civil service and the public sector, in culture and academia, in journalism and broadcasting, there have been huge strides towards a more representative spectrum at

the top. Even the traditional professions are no longer “vanilla boys’ clubs”. 

As for politics: one only has to glance at the present Government to see how much things have changed in the last decade. Two of the great offices of state are held by British Asians: Rishi

Sunak and Priti Patel. Last month Kwasi Kwarteng, whose parents came from Ghana in the 1960s, was appointed Business Secretary, succeeding Alok Sharma, who was born in India. Kwarteng, like

Sharma before him, has the job of dealing with a business establishment that disdains people like him. Never mind that Kwarteng is an academic high-flyer who attended Eton, Cambridge and

Harvard, or that he had careers in journalism and the City before going into politics. He is good enough for the Cabinet, but among FTSE 100 firms, it seems, there is no place for people who

look like him. When he deals with the business elite, he will often be the only black person in the room.

It just won’t do. Clearly exhortations are not enough to shame British bosses. Yet anyone who knows and respects Kwarteng, as the present writer does, will be aware that it would go against

the grain for him to chide or berate this corporate clique for not promoting a single black colleague into their ranks. He is too polite, too tactful — in short, too much of a gentleman to

engage in what he might feel was special pleading on behalf of other black Britons. Besides, as Secretary of State he must bear in mind that the Conservative Party relies heavily on

donations from business to finance its election campaigns. The impulse for change cannot come mainly from Kwarteng.

Instead, it is the two Ministers for Equalities who should throw down the gauntlet to the boys’ vanilla club. Liz Truss, who is also International Trade Secretary, and her deputy Kemi

Badenoch, who is also Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury, both know and are respected by British business. But their equality brief gives them the right and, indeed, the duty to speak out

about the exclusion of minorities from the snowy peaks. Ms Badenoch’s Nigerian roots and her meteoric rise entirely by her own efforts make her a superb role model. Ms Truss is also a

self-made woman with a deserved reputation for plain speaking, not least on behalf of women. The fact that she is white makes it easier for her to tackle the issue of discrimination head-on.

A strongly-worded statement by this dynamic duo, followed by a joint press conference, would galvanise the debate over diversity in the boardroom.

What if such an attempt to turn up the heat on the snowy peaks were not enough to melt them? If the mountain won’t come to Mohammed, Mohammed must go to the mountain. The Prime Minister

himself should make it his business to do away with discrimination in British business. The CBI, which pays lip service to the goal of diversity, could hardly refuse to give him a platform.

Boris the Mayor of London, Boris the Telegraph columnist, Boris the Tory party fundraiser have all shirked this responsibility. But if Boris Johnson the Prime Minister is serious about

levelling up, he will have to ruffle a few feathers. A clubman himself, he should tell this vanilla boys’ club to throw open its doors to talent from every quarter. He should remind them

that Oxford, his own alma mater (and many of theirs, too), has seen the writing on the wall. Last year the university accepted 684 BAME students, including 106 who are black. This represents

nearly a quarter of Oxford’s undergraduate intake. If Oxford, hitherto almost exclusively white, can reform itself in just a few years, then so can the FTSE 100. 

If the fat cats can’t, or rather won’t, be herded, then the Prime Minister should remind them of the words of John Maynard Keynes: “The businessman is only tolerable so long as his gains can

be held to bear some relation to what roughly and in some sense his activities have contributed to society.” Just now, what society expects from the businessman (or woman) is that they make

room at the top for a fair number of people with a different colour skin. Is that really too much to ask?

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