The ethnic minority vote in 2015 can be as decisive for Ed Miliband as it was for Barack Obama

Operation Black Vote (OBV), an organisation I have been proud to support for many years, has done us a great service with its latest study of Black and Ethnic Minority (BAME) voting intentions. If you missed the key findings, they were that at the 2015 general election 168 parliamentary seats will be swung one way or another by BAME voters. The vital insight is that these seats are no longer urban or inner-city, but include seats in Blackpool, Brighton, Newport, Northampton, Norwich, Oxford, Plymouth, Portsmouth, Milton Keynes and Southampton. The message for Labour is that the ‘BAME vote’, whilst not homogenous, can be as decisive for Ed Miliband as it was for Barack Obama.

The new demographics generate challenges for all political parties, but more uniquely for the Labour Party. Labour has traditionally won the votes of immigrants and second and third generation BAME voters due to its record on race relations and equalities legislation over generations. In the 1970s and 1980s these voters, largely anchored in either the Caribbean or Indian sub-continent, would turn out to vote Labour because they wanted the same chances for themselves and their children as the mainstream – social justice, fair access to work,  improved working conditions, and decent public services. Labour was seen, rightly, as the party of racial equality and equal opportunities. The 1976 Race Relations Act still stands as a landmark of that time.

Today, the pattern is far more complex. There are more affluent, middle-class BAME voters, now second and third generation. BAME voters live in more areas of the country: suburbs, towns and villages, not just the inner cities. And the term ‘BAME’ covers a much richer diversity of races, cultures and heritages than forty years ago. In my borough, Hounslow, over 140 languages are spoken by local people. The point is that Labour can’t rely on the BAME vote – Sadiq Khan in his excellent Guardian article rightly argues that the votes of BAME communities cannot be assumed by any political party – they have to be earned. We need to build relationships and trust in each generation, and be about the future not just the past and present.

Ed Miliband’s briliantly articulated vision of One Nation has been startlingly succinct in articulating both the challenge and opportunity before us. A vision of Britain where everyone can be proud of who they are, of their roots, and be proud to be British. A place where everyone feels they have a place and stake in Britain, and will be treated fairly. This message of unity and inclusion appeals across barriers of race and class.

I grew up in west London, in a friendly community where many local people came and went or popped in for a chat in my parents’ shop. Don’t get me wrong – we all experienced racism and know when we see it in our communities today.

I’m British, Asian, a Londoner and an ethnic minority British politician. I went to an open minded and inclusive Church of England school, where I learnt about Britain and Christianity, learnt the hymns sung at Royal weddings and the Christmas carols in our streets, sang in a choir that performed the Carmina Burana on tour, and fell in love with Latin as it slowly became phased out of our school. I was encouraged to volunteer in the community and joined friends in the summer doing just that. In short, I grew up loving being British and met children from other cultures who have given me a perspective on my own, though I never lost or closed down my Asian heritage. It grew as part of a mix that has defined my approach to community and relationship based politics. Since I became elected this diversity in my upbringing has given me a range of experiences and allows me to relate personally to the lives of so many in my home constituency. We are all the products of these swirling eddies of identity and loyalty. My own background convinces me that exposure to a set of deep values and positive interaction with people from a variety of ethnic, religious and social backgrounds is the way forward for British children growing up in an increasingly multi-ethnic country. We need to build and incentivise the structures through which our communities integrate.

Underneath the broad definition of One Nation, there’s space to articulate the detail. BAME voters are interested in the same things as everyone else, of course: schools and universities, the NHS, transport, jobs, opportunities for business to grow, crime and anti-social behaviour. But they also want to know about policies to tackle racial abuse and racially-motivated violence, to clear away barriers based on race which deny opportunities in education, public services and the world of work. They want fair and effective immigration and asylum laws, not vans indiscriminately driving round ethnic minority neighbourhoods saying ‘Go Home’ as they did in my constituency.

Most of all, BAME people want to be the best they can be, in whatever field they choose, free from the chains of prejudice. I was proud when Mo Farah beat the world at the Olympics a year ago – and triumphed again in Moscow last week – but doubly proud that he grew up in Feltham. The Conservative-led coalition is gripped by a difficult paradox that leaves ethnic minorities confused about what the Tories really think of them – as equal citizens or just votes to win. On the one hand the Tories want to be “tough” to win back perceived UKIP votes, which explains the cheap and nasty stunts criticised by UKIP themselves, whilst on the other hand they brief the newspapers of their plans to target the more affluent sections of the Indian community for votes. Similarly, when Britain turns away bright, promising overseas students, for example, we send a terrible signal to the world, as well as damaging our own economic future. You are left wondering which group the Tories will highlight next to be targeted.

We are fortunate to have come so far – but we have still further to go and like most equality gains, we need to keep a hawk eye on the Conservatives to be sure they don’t roll back the clock. The Government’s u-turn earlier this summer on the repeal of the EHRC General Duty was just one example.

Like many Labour members, I was incredibly proud at the announcement of Doreen Lawrence joining us in Parliament as a working peer. Yet our Parliament is not reflective of the population as a whole. It is astonishing to think that the House of Commons had had almost no minority representation until four BAME Labour MPs were elected in 1987. Today there are 27 non-white Members of Parliament, around 4% of the total. Eleven are Tories. Sixteen are Labour. There are no ethnic minority Lib Dem MPs. If Parliament reflected the population, there would be around 80 BAME MPs.

One of the main challenges for all political parties is not merely to court the votes of BAME voters, but also to motivate BAME people to understand politics and vote in the first place. What I hear from some BAME young people in my constituency is not that their traditional ties to Labour are threadbare, but that their sense that politics matters and is close to their lives is much less clear. BAME voters, like all voters, will increasingly shop around with their political loyalties. Far more worrying is BAME people not voting at all. If Mr Crosby has his way, and we enter a period of politics of division and playing one vote off against another, we shouldn’t be surprised if people turn their backs. That’s why, as ethnic minorities begin to question what the Tories really stand for, the consistency of Labour’s record and the reality of the One Nation message of inclusion will be a big opportunity to build those relationships and trust.