Suella Braverman is a fearless politician who says it as it is, regardless of progressive sensitivities. When I met her at length some years ago, I was impressed by her passion and determination. She was thoughtful, intellectually curious, ambitious and likeable. I support much of what she says. Yet I disagree with her article this week about Englishness. Asserting that she is “not English” despite being born and raised here, she wrote: “I am British Asian …but cannot claim to be English, nor should I” because Englishness “must be rooted in ancestry, heritage and, yes, ethnicity – not just residence or fluency.” In a follow-up post, she wrote that Englishness is partly based on racial factors.
Now, I’m not suggesting she identify as English if that’s not how she feels. If she prefers British Asian, great. But I disagree about what makes someone English. Ancestry? Ethnicity? Race? Surely not. Being raised here is the big factor. Take Lenny Henry. He was born and raised in Dudley to immigrants. Everyone agrees, then, he’s from Dudley, and he’s a Midlander, British and European. But bizarrely some say he can’t be English. Why? And what about footballer Jude Bellingham, who has a black mother and a white father and was, like me, born and raised around Birmingham? Is he only half English? Should he play in only half England’s matches?
All right, attitudes used to be different. Growing up in the 1970s, I was aware that skin colour marked you out. My football team, West Brom, had three black players.
They were my heroes, yet when I watched them play at Aston Villa lots of fans around me made monkey chants whenever they got the ball. Vile and typical of those times.
Yet as the 1980s went on, social norms changed, and it became utterly unacceptable to treat people differently according to colour. So, in the 1990s, and beyond, the vast majority of football fans never doubted that Paul Ince, Ian Wright, Sol Campbell and Ashley Cole were English.
They so obviously were. Just like the cricketer Moeen Ali. And Wayne Rooney and Harry Kane, despite their Irish heritage.
So, why, after all that, are we going backwards? Why should it now be controversial, for example, for me to say that Emma Raducanu, raised in Kent from age two, is England’s greatest tennis player since the 1970s? Or that Rishi Sunak is both Hindu and English?
The reason is a pincer movement between some elements of the Left, and some on what might be called the Right. On the Left, Englishness may be regarded as embarrassing and colonial, best replaced by the supposedly more inclusive Britishness.
Some on the Left support identity politics, which encourages people to group according to ethnicity, religion and sexuality rather than a common national identity.
Meanwhile, there are others, associated with the Right (though, according to a recent poll, only 10%) who say, like Suella Braverman, that Englishness is about ethnicity.
So, we end up with millions born and bred in England who exclude themselves from England’s national identity, or are excluded by others, purely because of ethnicity. That leads to division, silos, diluted common purpose and even hostility and violence.
Most of us on the centre-Right want nothing to do with this. That doesn’t stop us being horrified by the scale of immigration, nor does it stop us believing in a common set of English values, a strong nation state with meaningful borders and, for many, Brexit. You can be in favour of all that and know that Rishi Sunak is as English as afternoon tea.
England has made huge advances since the 1970s and is one of the most racially tolerant countries on earth. Let’s not get sucked into the insidious game of division. Let’s not go backwards. Englishness is not about ethnicity. Sorry Suella, but on this one I can’t support you.
