Yesterday's editorial dealt with the problems facing the United Bermuda Party after its third successive election defeat and whether it is still relevant today.

Today's editorial will look at what options are available to the party as it heads into a third term as the Opposition.

The first point that needs to be made is that the UBP, whatever its faults, attracted 47 percent or nearly half of the popular vote.

That it did not win more seats has as much to do with the Westminster system and the way it tends to reward an election winner with a disproportionate number of seats than with the weakness of the UBP. But that's the system, and there is no benefit to the UBP in carping over it.

The reality is that thousands of people placed their trust in the UBP and they need a voice, just as those who voted for the Progressive Labour Party in its long years in Opposition needed one too. For the Westminster system to work well, a strong Opposition is essential.

The question is whether the UBP can be that Opposition as it is currently constituted.

There have been suggestions that it should simply dissolve and its MPs should sit as Independents until some kind of phoenix emerges from the ashes.

For now, the UBP has rejected that option, in the belief that it still has a role to play. For now, that is probably the right decision.

Still, and regardless of the good intentions of its leaders, the UBP is hamstrung by the widely held perception that it is a white-supported and white-led party, even when its leader and senior Shadow Ministers are black.

Many of its senior members have a fervent commitment to a genuinely integrated and colour-blind society, and it goes against the grain for them to consider electing black leaders on the basis of their race, rather than on merit. It is unlikely that it would wash with the electorate either, if it was that transparent.

But as honourable and idealistic as that may be, it is not pragmatic in a society where race forms the sub-text for most political dialogue and one in which white voters make up just 27 percent of the electorate to select white leaders and expect to be elected.

Regardless of who becomes its leader, that person and the party's broader membership must show that they understand the frustrations and aspirations of black Bermudians in a society where wealth, and – to the extent that privilege provides more of it – opportunity still disproportionately benefits whites, both Bermudians and expatriate.

A poll commissioned by The Royal Gazette during the election campaign showed that housing, crime and education were the three issues that were uppermost in people's minds, with race relations lagging far behind.

But the fact is that race plays a key role in all three of those areas. Whites are hardly unaffected by them, but blacks are disproportionately affected by them.

Almost 50 years after desegregation began and 40 years after Bermuda finally moved to universal adult suffrage, this remains the Island's biggest challenge, and the UBP will only be viable if it shows it truly recognises the problem and comes up with genuine and workable solutions to narrow the gap.

That change – and it is not as if most, if not all, UBP MPs don't recognise it – is more important than any name change or leadership selection. Recognising black economic empowerment and presenting meaningful solutions to it is the only way forward for UBP, and if that means it must alienate some of its more hidebound white supporters, then that is what it has to do.