After the 2015 election disaster, a comprehensive post-mortem led by James Gurling analysed what had gone wrong and made a huge number of detailed recommendations of what should be done differently next time.

However, the snap election of 2017, coming just two years later and out of left field, meant that we were still recovering from 2015 and had not had much chance to implement many of those changes.

I say no – conscience comes before one’s own ambitions and equality, tolerance & justice are far more important that one’s own career path. The future of our great United Kingdom and our future generations is far more important than anything else in my view and worth fighting for every step of the way.

Politics surely should be about policies and not personal attacks – what a shame it hasn’t remained that way? What I did not realise is that this was just the beginning of a long and rocky ride over the coming months where I saw a real lurch to the right, in the words of the former Tory MP Stephen Phillips QC the party has started to mould itself into ‘UKIp-Lite’.

This lurch to the right began to be visible to me during the EU Referendum campaign. Having been instrumental in setting up ‘British Indians for In’ with the now Employment Minister Alok Sharma MP, I travelled up and down the country talking to the British Indian Community about the benefits of remaining in the EU.

Currently the only political leader and party outlining the inconsistencies in the Brexit argument are the Liberal Democrats & Sir Vince Cable – everyone else seems to have vanished & with them their ‘remain’ arguments too. That for me is still not the issue (even though some would say it remarkable how ‘remain’ politicians are now silent) – the issues are the by-products of the referendum vote for example a rise in hate crime in London and across the country.

Ethnic minority communities in particular the youth in these communities have been subjected to abuse which has divided our strong and united country. This has in my view been brought about by this constant lurch to the right by the Government.

This surely cannot be correct? Would we like our children or family members being treated differently just because they have a different accent? It is unfortunately where we currently are in our country. Whilst over 17 million people voted to leave the EU, over 16 million voted to stay.

Theresa May once called modern slavery “the great human rights issue of our time”, and she was right. The very idea that human beings are held in bondage in the UK today – forced to pick fruit and wash cars, to work on construction sites and in nail bars – is sickening.

I first became involved with party politics when I was 18. I was studying an undergraduate degree in Politics and Religious Studies (later refined to straight Politics) at Cardiff University. Like most first years, I had planned to join at least one society and throw myself into student life at the University. I knew I wanted to join a political society, and for me what was then Cardiff Conservative Future seemed like the perfect option.

The new Liberal Democrat Campaign for Race Equality aims to make the Liberal Democrats a truly multiracial party – to become a leading political force for race equality and integration.