‘What are you other than English?’ Former UK PM Rishi Sunak slams defining Britishness by skin colour

Former UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has warned against equating skin colour with nationality, saying people born and raised in England should not have their English or British identity questioned because they are not white.Writing on X on Sunday, Sunak said his Cowdrey Lecture at the Marylebone Cricket Club on Thursday had prompted him to reflect on cricket's place in British life and the country's debate over identity and integration.Race and British identitySunak said Britain had built a multi-faith, multi-ethnic democracy but warned that this achievement was under strain. He identified immigration and Islamism as challenges, while also highlighting what he described as a growing tendency to associate race with nationality.He pointed to online discussions after he left office questioning whether he was English because he was a "brown Hindu". Sunak described this as a "reverse Tebbit test", in which a person's support for England would no longer determine whether they were accepted as English because their skin colour would disqualify them.He also recalled footage from an election campaign in which someone called him a racial slur, saying the incident was shocking because such abuse had been unusual during his political career.Immigration and integration debate Sunak argued that concerns about immigration can coexist with opposition to defining Britishness through race. He said he supported a high bar for legal migration and had spent much of his premiership pursuing the deportation of asylum seekers to Rwanda."It is entirely possible to want a radical reduction in immigration and a far more robust approach to integration, and still totally reject the attempt to turn Britishness into a DNA test," he wrote."If you're born and brought up in England and view it as home, what are you other than English?"The former PM said denying people their Englishness or Britishness because of their skin colour risked creating alienation and a two-tier society.Cricket and shared identitySunak also pointed to cricket as a way of bringing different communities together. He said the sport connects people from different ethnic backgrounds, citing the shared interest in cricket among his largely white rural constituents in the Yorkshire Dales and British Asian children in Bradford.He argued that England teams in which children from different backgrounds can see themselves could help reinforce a shared sense of belonging."We must all be on the same side, cheering for the same team," Sunak wrote, adding that Britain should not allow race to be reintroduced into its politics.Catch the latest World News and Live updates. Download the TOI app.