My Response to Rishi Sunak - Konstantin Kisin
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What sparked Konstantin Kisin’s response to Rishi Sunak’s identity article?
My response to Rishi Sunak. Former Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has written a piece in the Sunday Times about identity, integration, and me. He doesn't say so explicitly, but he doesn't need to. Instead, he quotes me with that attribution. Less anger-inducing, but stranger still, he writes, was a debate that kicked off after I left office about whether I was English or not. The claim was that I couldn't be because I was, quote, a brown Hindu. That was me. In February last year on trigonometry, Fraser Nelson raised Sunak unprompted in a debate about identity and told me that Sunak was as English as Tizer and Wyfront. I made a nuanced counter argument, but in the ensuing crosstalk I said he's a brown Hindu.
How is he English? That was not the best articulation of an argument which Nelson himself described as a perfectly fair point in the aftermath. What I meant to use was the phrase that nobody objects to when the BBC uses it, British Asian. And I reached for a shortcut that obscured the argument rather than sharpening it. That's on me, and I've said so before. I typically don't go around issuing verdicts on whether people are English. I was answering a claim that had been put to me about a man I've never met and bear no ill will towards, on a podcast where my job is to respond to what my guest says. I'd have preferred the argument stayed general rather than focusing on Sunak. He didn't, and he's had a year of being the case study, which I regret.
I texted him privately to say so. No reply. I don't know if the number I was given for him is no longer in use, or he simply doesn't want to accept my apology. If it's the latter, that is of course his right. That's the concession. Here's what I won't concede. The charge that followed was not that I phrased it badly, it was that my position was racist. I have two children. Both were born in England to British parents who each came here from somewhere else. My children are not English either. They're British. I said this in the very same podcast Sunak pulls quotes from in his article.
How did Kisin’s original comment about Sunak’s Englishness become controversial?
My kids also happen to be whiter than a Michael Bublet Christmas album. So either I'm racist against my own white children, or maybe this isn't an argument about race. So Ella Braverman, Sunak's own former Home Secretary, responded to the row about my comments by penning an article in which she argued that as a proud British Asian, she herself is not English. Is she racist against herself? Or is there perhaps a more substantive discussion being had than people would like to pretend? It's twenty twenty six, of course, so to many people everything is about race. But instead of having the stupid version of this debate, let's take Sunak's argument and address it on its merits. Let's accept that anyone can be English.
All there is required is to be born in England and to say you're English. Feels good, doesn't it? If you're an ethnic minority like Sunak or an immigrant like me, just saying this codes you in the comforting protection of fitting in, being safe, living in the land of beautiful diversity. And if you're a white bred who says this, what a relief to know that you're definitely not a nasty racist. To his credit, Despite repeatedly and deliberately conflating Englishness with Britishness at his convenience, Sunak is an intelligent man who can't pretend he doesn't actually understand the argument I'm making. Some people, he says, will argue that English is an ethnic identity and British is a civic identity.
Though if you think those nuances are heard by most people, I fear you are being rather, and perhaps even willfully naive, he says. If you're born and brought up in England and view it as home, what are you other than English? Attempting to deny people their Englishness or Britishness because of the color of their skin is a recipe. Be for alienation and for a two-tier society. How are children who hear this meant to feel? If I was at any point naive about people's ability to hear the nuance of this debate, I've certainly been disabused of my delusions by the backlash to my comments.
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Chapters
4 chapters
1
What sparked Konstantin Kisin’s response to Rishi Sunak’s identity article?
0:00–2:03
2
How did Kisin’s original comment about Sunak’s Englishness become controversial?
2:03–7:15
3
Why does Kisin argue that anyone can be English if they claim it?
7:15–12:48
4
What does Kisin say about the impact of identity politics on British schools?
12:48–14:48
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