The news that the first and only Muslim Asian woman in politics from the north of England has been moved out of the Coalition cabinet in the mid-term reshuffle comes as no surprise to those of us in Bradford and West Yorkshire more widely who have been following Sayeeda Warsi's career.

From the beginning we felt that Warsi's appointment was tokenistic because the Tory DNA is in essence white, male, Anglo Saxon and Protestant to its core.

The signs that she was recruited as part of a 'tick box' form of politics were there from the start. She was a politician who had never won an election, yet she was promoted to the House of Lords and given a Cabinet appointment without humbler Government experience. Mind you, the fact that she was co-chair, rather than completely in charge, should have given her an early indication that her party only half-trusted her to execute the role she had been tasked with.

Notwithstanding the crude nature of such gesture politics, her appointment was nonetheless a political master-stroke. Recognising the Conservatives' persistent image as the' nasty party', David Cameron saw her real value as someone who could prop up the image of a modern reformist party comfortable in its multi-cultural skin.



The chimaera of an Asian woman influencing the levers of Tory power did prop up this illusion for most of the two-and-a-half years that Warsi was in the Cabinet. She offered the Tory party a plethora of photo opportunities that would have been a PR company's dream: the iconic image of Warsi smiling to camera dressed in a traditional Pakistani salwaar khameez against the backdrop of a predominantly male grey-suited Cabinet. She was the patriotic poster girl for British integration in a Union Jack-inspired traditional shawl celebrating the wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton.



One could argue that it is unfair to expect Sayeeda Warsi to carry the burden of ethnic representation and she ought to be judged on the merits of her performance in office. That would be true of the other Tory minority ethnic MPs who have wanted to be judged on their own terms rather than as a member of the community.

Did Warsi fit in to the more conventional and male-dominated Conservative party world? Photograph: David Rose /Rex Features

It was clear that as a working class, northern, Muslim woman, Warsi was expected to carry the mantle of race and faith when she was brought into office as the shadow minister of community cohesion and she carried off this role with considerable panache. In many of her party's pronouncements on issues affecting minority communities she was working alongside the Prime Minister helping him negotiate the fractious politics of ethnicity and religion.

It is widely known that Warsi was the co-architect of the PM's controversial speech on multiculturalism and British Islam at the Munich Security Conference in February 2011, in which Cameron called on Muslims to embrace British values. Throughout her political tenure she has been key to helping the party formulate its policy on terrorism and extremism.

Yet when it has come to asserting minority rights she has essentially remained silent on the issue. It was on her watch that the Equality Act has been eroded and the Equality and Human Rights Commission's role as the government watchdog for protected groups made impotent when their funding was halved. For a minister who came from a immigrant Pakistani family in Dewsbury, she has stood too much aside while the government has imposed measures such as increasing the income threshold for those wanting to sponsor a non-EU spouse or partner.

In the end, despite Warsi's attempts to follow Conservative policies loyally and make a political career for herself, she came up against the party line. In one of the very few interventions she made on behalf of the Muslim community - when she gave a speech condemning Islamophobia and declared that prejudice against Muslims had "passed the dinner table test" - her party seemed to turn on her.

She was investigated, earlier this year, for breaking ministerial rules in what to many seemed a contrast to the treatment of Jeremy Hunt over his handling of Rupert Murdoch's bid to control BSkyB.

In making the decision to replace Warsi it weems clear that the PM has ignored her plea to retain her in the cabinet post because "I'm a woman, I'm not white, I'm from an urban area, I'm from the north, I'm working class – I kind of fit the bill." The tragedy is that despite the changing demographic profile of the UK, Warsi does not fit the cabinet demographic bill that has dominated UK politics for so long. In demoting her to a newly created post as senior minister of state for foreign and commonwealth affairs and then allowing her to attend Cabinet meetings, the Prime Minister is engaging in more and worse tokenism. Warsi should retain her self-respect by leaving the Conservative party and exposing the sham that underlies mainstream politics today.

Ratna Lachman is Director of JUST West Yorkshire