Cllr Valerie Bossman-Quarshie says she would like to see more candidates from minority backgrounds at the next election

A COUNCILLOR is calling for more diverse candidates at the next general election, warning that parliament is still largely dominated by older white men.

Bunhill ward councillor Valerie Bossman-Quarshie said: “We need to bring in diversity. If an older person is going out, we need to bring younger people in.”

She has in the past been linked as a possible Labour candidate in Islington North, with the party refusing to allow Jeremy Corbyn to stand again.

Asked if she was planning on running as an MP here or anywhere else, Cllr Bossman-Quarshie said: “If the baton was passed on to me, it means that I would stand. And why not me? Why not a mum, why not a black woman, working class, Islingtonian, grassroots activist, raised on a council estate by a working-class mum and migrant. My mum is from Ghana, so I’m second generation, #WhyNotVal?”

Labour has been selecting parliamentary candidates up and down the country with a general election now nearing and the party hoping to show it is ready to remove the Conservative government.

But it has delayed a decision in Islington North, which comes with a unique set of circumstances, and organisers who have already said they are unhappy that the process is being controlled from above and that members should be free to select their chosen candidate.

Cllr Bossman-Quarshie said: “In the next election, I want more black minority ethnic candidates to come forward, people with disabilities, whether they’re visible or hidden, LGBTQ+ people – it should be for everybody. The average age for an MP is 50 – it’s a joke.”

She added that a lack of diversity in local government means democracy is not working because communities are not having their voices heard.

“It gives us the people’s assembly that we desperately need in democracy,” she said.

“We want people to bring their views into the Town Hall, be in the places where policies are made, because that’s at the heart of democracy. It’s not just about anyone standing, it’s also about getting people ready to stand. No one is ever ready because people stay in positions for too long and so no one can get the experience or opportunities they need. It just isn’t fair.”

At this month’s full council meeting, Cllr Bossman-Quarshie proposed and passed a motion for the council to commit to increasing diversity in its ranks and encouraging people under-represented to be a part of their local government.

Mr Corbyn, who has served Islington North for more than 40 years, had the party whip removed in 2020. He has yet to confirm whether he will stand as an independent candidate at the next election, but later in today’s Tribune, in a piece about the human cost of austerity, he writes: “​When faced with a choice between a politics of incompetence and a politics of pessimism, the people of Islington North will look elsewhere for a vision worth voting for.”