A Reform MP has made some fairly expressive comments about the number of black faces in TV advertising. She is pointing to the phenomenon that black people are wildly over-represented in TV advertising relative to their proportion in the population. Anyone can see this and you don’t need an organised survey to tell us that this is the case, though that work has been done – by Channel 4. [1]
The same, anecdotally, is true of mixed raced couples – a go-to favourite of advertisers and I would hypothesise well in excess of their actual proportion in the population.
The Reform MP commented on this and unwisely spoke her mind, saying, according to the Guardian, [2] the number of black people in advertising “makes her mad”. It doesn’t make me mad though perhaps a tiny bit amused or slightly fed up – some kind of point is being deliberately made and that is a tiny bit irritating.
But Labour, usually on the ball with the populist tone, is going to lose it if they start accusing people who make remarks like this of being racist, as the Health Secretary has done. [2] And this is why Reform is picking up votes. The views expressed by this Reform MP will be widely held across the country. Anyone can see that black people are wildly over-represented in advertising – and I would guess most people would feel it shouldn’t be a crime to comment on that. (I wonder in passing how black people feel about this? I would hazard a guess that some, at least, also find it a bit odd). If Labour is going to tie their electoral chances to the mast of “multi-culturalism” despite it now being obvious to all that “multi-culturalism”, (itself a very valid and worthwhile ideal) has been treated as a scam by them, to license mass immigration for the sake of financial profiteering, they are going to lose. Good. (Incidentally; the same pattern is evident in relation to “gay rights”; a valid and worthwhile campaign for tolerance and equality before the law, has been exploited to sanction privileged rights for gay people, and to drive through a novel ideology which aims to equalise all kinds of abnormalities with normal life).
Notes