This is a difficult article to write. I’ve already written more than one full draft which had to be discarded because I didn’t think it put it quite right, and I don’t think this version will win me any friends either. But at some level I think this has to be said, because it’s so important for our party and for our politics.

There are two key things to say.

The first is that the under-representation of ethnic minorities within the Liberal Democrats is an ongoing near-scandal which we have clearly not really begun to make any serious inroads into tackling. If it were just a question of under-representation in a few scattered council groups, or at one tier of government, we could perhaps put it down to particular local factors in those cases. But it isn’t: it’s a failure across the country and across the board of our elected representatives - so it isn’t just an incidental issue, it’s clearly a systematic problem.

This problem is first and foremost one of ensuring government which is fully representative - a principle which is not only fair, but one on which the contract of peaceful governance depends.

But it is also a hard-nosed question of political pragmatism for us as a party: quite simply we can’t expect people to vote us if they don’t think we look like them.

We have to find a way of solving this problem. Over the years we - and many other organisations, including other political parties - have tried various things to solve this problem, and have obviously not succeeded.

There are two possible responses to that.

The first is to conclude that we’re simply never going to succeed - or perhaps to say that other principles in the way we work as a party and the way we select candidates, are more important than solving this problem.

The second is to look more imaginatively at what we might need to do to solve it, including perhaps more direct action which we have ruled out in the past.

It will be clear to you which my own response is - and why I was pleased when Nick Clegg also indicated during the leadership election his potential willingness to support such moves.

Quite simply the sorts of solutions we have tried in the past haven’t worked, so we need to look at new solutions.

But there is also a second problem too - and this is more difficult to do. To put this very bluntly - but accurately, I believe - too many of the figures from ethnic minority backgrounds who come into the party, expect to be given an important role - commonly a candidacy in a key seat - very quickly and on a plate, without putting in the necessary work themselves. Let me say immediately that there are some very honourable exceptions to this, and also that I don’t actually think this tendency is any more common among party members from under-represented groups than it is from straight white men. Frankly, many of the latter also stride into the party with wholly unrealistic expectations and after a short period of realising the lie of the land, stride out again.

But in the big scheme of things, they don’t really matter - what we are desperately short of are ethnic minority candidates and so it really matters what they do.

It really does matter when an ethnic minority potential candidate expects to be given a good seat or position, but is not prepared to put in the work which in the two-party system we inhabit all Liberal Democrats, regardless of race, creed or colour, need to do - and then swans out again, saying that the party is not serious about promoting greater ethnic minority representation.

Let me please emphasise again that I do not think people from ethnic minority backgrounds are more guilty of this than anybody else - simply that it matters much more, because of our collective failure as a party to attract more ethnic minority candidates.

In fact it is now pretty well established what a potential candidate needs to do in order to be selected within the Liberal Democrats. Many reading this will know what this is as well as I do - but the main elements are things like doing a very very large amount of campaigning, over a period of at the very least many months and usually many years, showing good political skills in attracting supporters, building up a campaign team, and generally putting in a very very large amount of time and hard work.

I don’t need to go into the details of the formula here - the point is that there is a formula for what you need to do to become a successful Lib Dem candidate. Pretty much every single person who has succeeded in a Lib Dem selection contest, whether for an individual constituency or conducted on a regional basis, has done so by following it.

Among the people who know this and are putting in the work to accomplish it, certainly are some people from ethnic minorities - several in a current generation who have not yet made the breakthrough but hopefully will do, spring to mind (but I have made a rule not to name any individual names in this article as I simply think that creates more problems than it solves).

But too often in the past, the only candidates who have put the well-recognised formula into practice are ones who happen to be white.

Sometimes it may be possible to point out that the victors in selections are white, while others are from ethnic minorities - but the real explanation is that the victors are those who have been prepared to put in the work, and they simply happen to have been white. And indeed we have all seen that the situation can often be made worse by people with all the right intentions at heart, encouraging new candidates from ethnic minorities to put themselves forward, saying that the party needs more EM candidates, when the individual may not be yet ready, or fully understand what you need to do in order to win.

It has also to be said - again, though it will not be popular - that there are candidates whose assessment of their own abilities and sheer political talent does not correspond very closely to other people’s assessment of them. This is again hardly something applicable only to ethnic minority candidates - one or two fairly spectacular recent instances of white male candidates suffering from the same affliction spring to mind.

But, again, it matters far more with candidates from under-represented groups.

I am writing this article more than anything else because two different groups of people in the party respectively focus on the two different problems above - and are completely fixed in their own perspective, conceding absolutely nothing to the other explanation. One group are angry that the party has failed on EM representation - certainly true - and others are simply critical of candidates who have simply not put in the work or are just not good enough, and then blamed race - also certainly sometimes true.

I have had enough of this dialogue of the deaf, and I think if we are to succeed then we need to tackle this head on - and that includes being prepared to admit that the approach of some EM candidates is sometimes a problem, which too often too many people in the party are scared to do.

So what can we do about solving these two problems?

Well, my proposal is this. I think we need to be prepared to give additional support to candidates from ethnic minority backgrounds, as I have said both for reasons for equity and for reasons of our party’s hard-nosed self-interest. That may include financial or whatever other support is needed.

But in return for that additional support I think we need be absolutely honest with such candidates what it is that is required to become a Lib Dem councillor, candidate or MP - and then insist that those who receive that support, commit to undertaking that work. That might mean typically a commitment to spend a certain number of hours out knocking on doors per month, meeting a certain number of members, or whatever. Indeed commitments of this kind are already generally required of candidates in leading seats.

So I would like to see us create a cohort of candidates who explicitly sign up to do all the things that we know successful candidates have to do. In return I would like to see such candidates being given additional support and assistance - most successful candidates already make use of a network of experienced supporters, and those we promote and help should certainly have access to that.

If we did then find that time after time, candidates who did put in the work, and who did jump through the hoops that successful candidates need to, and they are still not selected - then I think we will need to accept that even more radical measures are needed. The things that we expect of all our potential candidates, of any ethnicity, are quite extraordinary, and more than the other major parties, and there is a good case to be made for revolutionising our whole system of selection to tackle that. But that is a separate discussion about our system for all candidates - on which Jo Christie-Smith has started a very sensible discussion - our more immediate task is to force the system we have to deliver more ethnic minority candidates.

Can I finish by reiterating again that this is in no way a criticism or attack on any individual - I have very carefully refrained from naming any individual, because I don’t think this is about the merits of any one individual (and could I ask anyone serious commenting on this to consider please adopting the same approach).

We have several excellent party members from ethnic minority backgrounds, who have succeeded in becoming councillors, PPCs, Parliamentarians or other senior figures - and they have done that, in large part, by implementing the formula of what a successful Lib Dem candidate needs to do. I have nothing but congratulations for those who have succeeded in doing that, doing it as they have done, against the odds.

But I do think we have to be clear that as a party we are failing to attract anything like enough good ethnic minority candidates - and we need to be open and honest about all the major reasons for that, and find solutions which tackle them.