Jan Doust

The reason the whole “Is Rishi Sunak English?” brouhaha has blown up and continues to blow up is that it actually has very LITTLE to do with Rishi Sunak. He is culturally English, but ethnically Indian. I don't think there is much more to add to that particular conversation. Does he have a dual loyalty to India? Yes, no doubt. He married into a multi-billionaire Indian family and spoke at various “Indian diaspora” events while he was an MP. He is a devout Hindu, and his family and ancestry come from the Mother Country. It would be frankly bizarre if he didn't feel some degree of ethnic nostalgia towards India. I mean, he's only human! Joe Biden feels ethnic nostalgia towards Ireland, so it would be bizarre if Sunak didn't have some of those emotions towards India. But I digress. That isn't the real issue. The reason this has blown up is that the English aren't being recognised as an ethnic group and therefore can't mobilise their ethnic interests within the British system, which is essentially an asymmetric form of multiculturalism. It affords ethnic pride and patronage to minorities while doing much less, and often the opposite, for Whites. Given mass immigration and rapid demographic change, the White English population increasingly wants to be recognised as a "Stakeholder" and a major player within this system, so that it can push back against what it sees as the downgrading of its culture, history and nation. Rishi Sunak is a good egg. He's a jolly-hockey-sticks, upper-middle-class “nice bloke”. He's assimilated, while retaining some ancestral/cultural nostalgia towards India. Unfortunately, Sunak has been dragged into a conversation that isn't really about him at all. It's about English Whites wanting recognition, so they can mobilise politically in the same way that minority groups have successfully mobilised around their own ethnic interests.