Former UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak/Image: Reuters
Because they are not white, 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.
Sunak 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. 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.
Because of their skin colour risked creating alienation and a two-tier society, the former PM said denying people their Englishness or Britishness.
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. 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. Sunak argued that concerns about immigration can coexist with opposition to defining Britishness through race. Sunak also pointed to cricket as a way of bringing different communities together.