In Conversation with Femi Oluwole: Problems within Britain’s Political Systems, Encouraging Political Awareness Through Social Media, and More

Femi Oluwole is a British political activist, journalist and co-founder of the British pro-European Union advocacy group, ‘Our Future, Our Choice’. He has appeared on LBC, Channel 5 and GMB as a political commentator. His Instagram and YouTube platforms explain political stories like the impact of Brexit, human rights and immigration. Recently Femi participated in an Oxford Union debate that explored whether the England flag has become a symbol of hate. 

With the rise of far-right wing ideologies and political parties, Femi is encouraging voters not to consider voting for the Reform Party in upcoming elections. 

Femi says: Co-founder of the Reform party,  Catherine Blaiklock, who said Black people were inherently violent due to excess testosterone. One of its MPs Sarah Pochin says it drives her mad seeing adverts full of Black and Brown people. One of their candidates, Matt Goodwin said Black Brits aren't necessarily British. Another said Nigerians should be melted to fill potholes. And Nigel Farage recently published a manifesto warning that ethnic minorities were trying to dominate white people. This is the kind of stuff that got people with our skin colour hunted in the street in Summer 2024. If you want that in government, go right ahead. If you don't, join and shape your local Green Party.

In this conversion, Femi explores the difficulties faced by our current political system, apprehensions held by Black voters towards taking part in politics and how social media has shaped his outreach. 

If you had to diagnose the biggest problem facing Britain's political system today, what would it be? 

The big problem today is the voting system - the fact that the majority of votes in the UK effectively don't count. If you live in a town where 60% of the people vote for things that you want, but that vote is split 30-30 between two parties that are just slightly different to each other, a party that does the exact opposite of everything you want gets 40% though the majority of your town wants one thing, it's going to be represented by an MP who wants the exact opposite. And that keeps repeating across the country, which is why we constantly get governments that are more right-wing than the actual people. So not only are left-wing views underrepresented, but it also means that the views of Black people are underrepresented in government because it means that our votes, because we tend to vote to the left, literally count less than those of white people.

As you said, when you feel like your vote doesn't count, you probably are not likely to vote. When do you think politics started to stop being representative? Do you think it was before First Past the Post, or do you think there was a changing moment when you thought politics is just not representative for any Black person right now? 

As far as I'm aware, our voting system has always been First Past the Post. As far as what was my first sign that we have a problem of Black people not really being included in the conversation, the moment that I woke up on the morning after the referendum result in 2016, and I saw the majority of British voters had essentially followed Nigel Farage's example in the voting booths, my first thought was, ‘my country will never be good again if the country is willing to follow a racist’. And I've struggled since then to try and encourage more Black people to get involved in politics because I got the same message that a lot of them got, which is, if they're willing to follow Nigel Farage and the voting patterns, maybe this country essentially doesn't accept us. Maybe we're not welcome here. Maybe they want something that doesn't include us. And so that feeling of not being represented has been the thing that I've been fighting against ever since.

Do you think that under representation has been an issue since before the referendum or did the  referendum reveal more problems that weakened the political system?

I think, well, as Martin Luther King says, the moral arc of the universe is long, but it leans towards justice. Obviously, the further back you go, the worse things get for Black people in general. One thing that I would say is a ‘good’about Brexit is that it acted as political alcohol in the sense that, just like Trump, it's that thing that tells you that your darkest, worst thoughts are okay to say out loud. And so it very much revealed the structural problems that were there before, the biases, the racism , but it allowed people to come out and say it.   It’s easier to address because sunlight is the best disinfectant and all that, but it revealed pre-existing problems.

What political system would you prefer? And what would you suggest would be a good political electoral system?

My gut just says a regional system of porter representation. What that means is in your town and your city, let's say Birmingham or North London has 10 MPs representing it in total, and rather than those 10 MPs having their own individual constituencies, you group those 10 MPs together into a much larger constituency. And so, if the Greens get 20 percent of the vote, that gives them two MPs. If Labour gets 30 percent of the vote, they get three MPs, et cetera.

So given that the majority of voters in the UK have voted for parties to the left of the Conservatives in almost every single election since World War II, if we had a voting system where the MPs in Parliament reflected the votes of the people, we would get essentially progressive politics for the rest of time. So that's what I want. Under that system, you would have fair voting whilst also maintaining a degree of a local link, because it would still be the MPs for North London, the MPs for Birmingham.

As you know, trust continues to be low for politicians and across party lines. What steps do you think could restore public confidence in Britain for Black people?

The first step is criminal liability for damaging lies from politicians. The way I put it is, if I tell a lie on my tax return that costs the public purse £1,000, I go to jail. But Boris Johnson tells probably the biggest lie in the history of UK politics, about the £350 million a week that we supposedly send to the EU, let's spend it on the NHS instead, costs the public purse £40 billion a year. And instead of going to jail, he goes to Downing Street.

 I think criminal liability in the same way that we would be liable for our lies, should be the case at a political level. As for Black people being able to trust the system, that means a fair voting system because if we consistently get governments that are more right wing than the actual people, then given that Black people tend to vote for the left, it means that our votes literally count less than white people. So a fair voting system, a proportional system would be a major step in terms of restoring faith in democracy. 

Because proportional systems tend to use party lists, it would enable parties to get more Black and Brown people into parliament, because they could simply say, we're going to make sure that we have a quota, that some of our MPs are going to be from this background, this background, this background, and you'll see a lot more representation of people from all backgrounds in parliament.

But I think in terms of just generally fixing racism, my top priority has always been making anonymous CVs, if not mandatory, at the very least significantly fiscally incentivised. Oxford University shows that if you have a West African name, you have to send 80% more applications when you're applying for a job. And they did that by using CVs that were identical, the only thing they changed was the name. 

So, life in the UK passes through a filter of racism. And so, until we remove that filter, we won't get equality. At the very least, remove that name bias- even if there's still bias in the interview, at least you can get more Black people through the door.

You've built quite a large platform online telling political stories, whether it's about Brexit or human rights. Do you think that having a large audience where you discuss politics has changed the public's engagement for better or for worse? Do you think your platform discussing politics has improved people's interest in politics or do you think it's been more divisive?

My favourite experience that I ever get in politics, is when a Black person or a young person comes up to me and says, ‘it was seeing you either on social media or some news show that made me feel, okay, I have a right to be involved in this as well’.  The message that I got as a kid, especially living in Birmingham or Dundee or Darlington, places far away from London, for me, I thought politics were just old white men shouting at each other in suits 100 miles away.

As for social media in general, I know that the reason why I exist, the reason why I'm able to do what I do is because the mainstream media dropped the ball on Brexit. If they had explained the stuff half as well as they should have done, there would have been no gap in the market for me to even slip in, and I wouldn't have this job.

It's only because I explained stuff correctly and the people started listening to me. So have I had a good effect on political discourse? Yeah, absolutely!I wouldn't do this if I didn't think that I was.

But obviously I'm not the only one on social media. And you've got to then balance that out with your Andrew Tate's, with what Elon Musk has done to Twitter, and all the bad things that have come with social media in terms of just poisoning the political discourse. And does it balance out? I would say yes, because ultimately the mainstream news channels are owned by those with power. Those with power have been trying to corrupt the social media space as well. The best chance of pushing back against power is from those who don't have it, and that means using social media.

Would you say that through social media you've experienced extreme polarisation?

I wouldn't say that polarisation has come from social media. I would say that polarisation has very much been driven by the mainstream media, more so than social media. [For] example,whenever I get called for a news show or debate channel, the producer will always ask me my views on whatever the trending topic is that day. And I'll notice that if I give a nuanced answer where I explain how I can see both sides, but why I think this side is the right one, I'm more likely to get a call back in the next half hour saying they went with somebody else.

And so I learned that if I want to get on TV, I have to think, what is my honest position? And how do I frame that in the quickest, upbeat way, so that it stays honest, but the producer will like the sound of it. So they deliberately go out of their way to find the most polarised views in order to create clips, which ultimately, they want. 

As you said that you have found the gap in the market for telling political stories, what do you think politicians are misunderstanding about young Black voters?

I'd say the tragedy is that I don't think they're fully misunderstanding.  I think that politicians don't fear male Black voters, because we're not as engaged with the capitalistic politics as we should be. It's improving 100%, and it's one of the reasons why I do what I do, so I can get more young Black people involved in politics. 

If you are not doing things to actively improve the situation and the lives of Black people by engaging in politics, you cannot claim to be pro-Black. I think that is something that we need to, as a community, get militant about, specifically on the male side.

Would you say, with the rise of smaller parties, independents, and far-right extreme parties, do you think Britain is more fragmented as a political landscape?

I wouldn't say that we've become more fragmented as a political landscape. I would say that fragmentation has always existed in the public, and I think that because politics wasn't so binary before 2016,  there was a plethora of different views that weren't automatically all on one side or the other. I think that because politics has become so binary, arguably we're less fragmented than we were before, just more aggressively binary than we were before.

How concerned are you about the quality of the political debate in Britain today, and who do you think has the responsibility to improve it?

I'm extremely concerned about the quality of the political debate; it's why I do what I do. I think the mainstream news pretty much holds full responsibility for that, because unlike other Western countries, we have the advantage, and that advantage is Brexit in terms of the fight against the far right, because in the UK, unlike other places, the far right tied their entire flag to one mast, and that mast was Brexit. They spent 40 years telling people that Brexit was going to make their lives better, and so we now have seen how their agenda plays out, and even those on the Brexit side, on the right side, have all admitted that Brexit has made us poorer. So we, as a country, have the evidence to say these people are bad for this country. Yet, our mainstream media keeps platforming the people that they know were catastrophically and historically wrong.

If they had any interest in actually informing people, in making sure we don't go in the wrong direction, that hurts the lives of millions of people, they would not be platforming people who they know have been proven to be on the wrong side of history, and yet they keep doing it for ratings. So as far as corrupting the political discourse, that's on them. We shouldn't have seen Nigel Farage on our screen, except for to be held to account for the damage he did via Brexit since 2016, since 2021.

 What is the change you would hope to see for Britain in the next 10 years regarding British politics? 

We need a written constitution so that we actually have proper rules, and those rules would include criminal sanctions for blatant lies, those rules would include if you break the laws of Parliament you don't get to stand for office again, unlike Boris Johnson who unlawfully shut down Parliament and then was running for Prime Minister just a few months later we stop seeing all the craziness we've seen in terms of just playing games, no second jobs, no second incomes for MPs, and a cooling off period after they're in government where they can't start lobbying on behalf of private companies afterwards. 

In terms of realistically improving things, it's undoing Brexit. Objectively it was the biggest debate of the last 10 years, the last 40 years arguably, and as far as  policies that are affecting the UK economy and therefore the cost-of-living crisis, there is no policy that is causing more damage than Brexit right now. 

So, any politician that isn't tackling Brexit head-on as fast as they possibly can, cannot possibly claim to care about the 30 million people who are in poverty or the rest of the UK in general who are suffering through a cost-of-living crisis. I've just come back from Brussels where I spoke to EU officials including Sandro Ghosi, who is the Brexit spokesperson of the European Parliament, and he said we want the UK to come back; we're just waiting for you to change your policy. So there is no barrier on the EU side, there's no block on the EU side, it is simply UK politicians choosing poverty deliberately, knowing that it's hurting people. So what can be done over the next 10 years?  

If you could describe what it means to be a Black Briton, how would you describe it, the experience? 

There is a reason why my accent is often referred to as screwed up. It is because I was born in Darlington to Nigerian parents, I then moved to Middlesbrough, to Swansea in Wales, to Dundee in Scotland, back down to Birmingham, up to Darlington again, back down to Birmingham. So, I never really picked up a regional accent other than a bit of Scottish, but at the age of nine my accent was pure California. Why? Because the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air and Kenan and Kel were the only places that I saw people who looked like me, and because the places I lived at were very, very white, and I just picked up those accents much more easily. 

Black representation and Black people knowing who they are, especially if they grow up in white areas, is difficult, especially because in those white areas you face the racism, and so once you grow up you then have to unlearn a lot of stuff that you've been told about yourself, so a sense of identity is difficult to really hang on to. And the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air stuck with me especially because  my parents are both doctors, so middle-class upbringing, whilst also I'm being Black the show  is all about that mix between class and race.

The Black British experience in London will be very, very different from the Black British experience in Darlington, and so defining it is difficult, especially if you're in the latter camp of not really growing up around many Black people.

What would you say you want your audience to actively participate in, having listened to you, followed you, commented under your post?

You have two jobs; get as many people you know to vote and have as many conversations about what politicians have already done. So nobody you know should be voting for Nigel Farage, or even considering voting for him.  Other countries across the West, we know what these people have already done, we already know that he's made people poor, and the notion that he might become our next Prime Minister is painful to me. If we give up, then it's the people doing that stuff that end up dictating our lives for the rest of our lifetimes. And I think that that is far worse than a bit of awkwardness on social media, or a bit of awkwardness at the dinner table. So get over it and do what's necessary to change things, because it can be changed. I've just come out from Clacton, where I convinced a bunch of people that Farage was not the answer.

 If you can, join the Green Party, because if Labour doesn't feel that we have an option to abandon ship, they're going to keep doing the wrong things. So it's not just about voting Green, you need to make sure the Green Party is listening to Black people. And the only way you can do that is by filling it up with Black people.

How do you stay motivated to continue sharing political stories on social media?

My whole life is about trying to make things better for other people. And given that I know that I have the ability to, especially on Brexit, expose these politicians for who they are, I have a moral responsibility to use that skill.