Just six per cent of the candidates selected so far to contest marginal seats for Labour at the next general election are from ethnic minorities.

Of 99 candidates selected in seats where Labour needs to gain fewer than 10,000 votes to win, just six were from ethnic minority backgrounds. Nine ethnic minority candidates who contested marginal seats for the party in 2017 have been replaced with white candidates.

Currently, eight per cent of MPs are from an ethnic minority background, compared with around 13.6 per cent of the UK population.

David Lammy, the MP for Tottenham who campaigns against racial inequality, said that “in the year of rising hate crime, anti-immigration rhetoric and the Windrush scandal, it’s depressing that the natural party of ethnic minorities has failed once again. Meanwhile, the Conservatives have more ethnic minority MPs rising to senior posts and cabinet roles.”

In 2017, a total of 52 ethnic minority MPs were elected, up from 41 in 2015. Of these, 32 were Labour although two – Chuka Umunna and Fiona Onasanya – have since left the party, having quit and been expelled respectively.

In South Thanet, 2017 Labour candidate Raushan Ara increased her party’s vote share by 14 per cent, but lost the subsequent selection to Rebecca Gordon-Nesbitt. In Loughborough, Jewel Miah, who slashed Nicky Morgan’s majority by nearly 5,000, lost the subsequent selection contest to Stuart Brady.