Sadly, it was no real surprise to me when Pauline Pearce labelled the Liberal Democrats’ attitudes to race as “neanderthal” and accused them of “underhand racism” as she ditched her attempt to become party president.

Pearce, better known as the “Hackney heroine” after she lambasted rioters in the 2011 summer riots, was co-opted soon afterwards by senior Liberal Democrats. Early on, though, there were suspicions that the party was using her as window dressing to disguise the fact that all its MPs are white.

“We’re making progress,” one senior member told me. “Look, we’ve got Pauline the Hackney heroine.” Whether it was naive of Pauline to think she could become party president in such a short space of time is not the point; the real scandal was that she feels, with some justification, that she was used as a quick-win media tool to fool black and minority voters into thinking that the party was serious about diversity.

In the run-up to the 2010 general election, Vince Cable spoke passionately at an election rally held by Operation Black Vote and the black churches: “We’ve done terribly in regards to diversity in our party, but today I promise you that I will personally take responsibility for changing that.” You can only guess what happened to that personal promise.

But it’s not just the Liberal Democrats. Lady Warsi’s resignation as a Conservative minister was sparked by what occurred in Gaza. But that wasn’t all. For some time now, Warsi has felt that her project, along with that of Lord Ashcroft, to make the Conservative party more inclusive was being undermined by the toxic debate over immigration.

Interestingly, in her early days as a Conservative politician she too allowed herself to be used by her party bosses, at the cost of upsetting fellow Muslims and others, by suggesting that the Tories should reach out to BNP voters, arguing as she did back then that the far-right party had “legitimate” concerns. It was only later, when she began to demand that her own party confront growing Islamophobia, that she noticed significant political moves against her in the shape of vicious internal detractors. David Cameron stood by her throughout, though, because he admired her fighting spirit and was also was acutely aware that she is a genuine link to Muslim communities, which the party has historically failed to connect with.

One might expect better from the Labour party. After all, it often commands 70% of the ethnic minority vote – although more than half of Britain’s minorities don’t vote at all. But the difference isn’t great. For example, after the 2010 general election there were fewer new minority Labour MPs than Conservative ones (eight compared with nine). And, unlike Conservative candidates, ethnic-minority Labour candidates find it almost impossible to gain selection outside the traditional urban areas.

And the party shamelessly exploits its own window-dressing opportunities too. In recent months senior Labour figures have been falling over themselves to have their picture taken with the 19-year-old winner of The Voice, Jermain Jackman – who declared himself a Labour supporter and said he wanted to become prime minister. Of course, I hope this young man has a bright political future: my worry is that he’ll be wheeled out, as Pearce and Warsi have been, to demonstrate the party’s inclusive credentials while the substantive issues of tackling race inequality and representation are ignored.

And that’s the whole point. Yes, we want minority faces in high places, but we also want those and others to talk about how we can tackle growing race inequality effectively.

At one end we have young black men who face unemployment rates that top 50%. Many of those who are lucky enough to find work are often on zero-hours contracts. At the other end, according to a report from Trevor Phillips’s Green Park Diversity Analytics, the top 100 FTSE companies have senior directors who are virtually all white. This mirrors our research on academia, which shows that of 14,000 professors in the UK, only 60 are black. To date none of the political parties has a race-equality strategy that even begins to tackle these growing challenges.

Operation Black Vote’s research has shown that there are 1 million black and minority-ethnic voters in 168 marginal seats across the UK, who will have a significant impact on next year’s election. Any party that wants to form the next government must surely realise it has to address social and racial injustice, and cannot assume that voters will be fooled by a few cynical photo-opportunities.