Indians should stop getting excited: Rishi Sunak is hardcore anti-immigrant 'Conservative'

Great Britain’s inherent disdain for its former colonial subjects ominously echoed more than 20 years after the end of the Raj on 20 April, 1968, when Tory member of Parliament (MP) Enoch Powell saw “the River Tiber foaming with much blood” due to the consequences of continued unchecked mass immigration from the Commonwealth to the United Kingdom (UK).

“The discrimination and the deprivation, the sense of alarm and of resentment lies not with the immigrant population but with those among whom they have come and are still coming,” Powell thundered in a polarising speech delivered at the Conservative Political Centre, Birmingham, triggering a political storm.

In his ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech, Powell launched a frontal assault on the then-Labour Party government’s introduction of the Race Relations Act, 1968, which prohibited racial discrimination in certain areas of British life, especially housing.

Finding the idea of integration of immigrants with Britain a “ludicrous misconception” and the Act “dangerous”, Powell said that it was the “means of showing that the immigrant communities can organise to consolidate their members, to agitate and campaign against their fellow citizens … I am filled with foreboding; like the Roman, I seem to see the River Tiber foaming with much blood”.

Ironically, more than five decades since Powell’s divisive words, Britain has the first Prime Minister (PM) of South Asian descent and the youngest in 200 years—that too a practising Hindu with ‘Indian’ roots. What was outside the realm of imagination in Britain decades ago is a stark reality today.

Terming him as the beacon of hope for stronger India-UK ties and Indian immigrants in Britain, a majority of Indians and the UK’s Indian diaspora have rapturously welcomed Rishi Sunak’s ascendancy to 10 Downing Street.

Colour-coding Sunak’s meteoric rise in British politics—from an MP elected (Richmond, North Yorkshire) in May 2015 to the 57th PM in 2022—due to his ancestral ‘Indian’ roots and expecting a sudden boom in bilateral ties is juvenile and could be a mirage.

Indians were even ecstatic about the former chancellor’s Indian ancestry and his 10 Downing chances before Boris Johnson’s impending ignominious exit—and the moment Britain’s enfant terrible hung his gloves, they expected Sunak to head to Buckingham Palace in a few days. But he lost to then-foreign secretary Liz Truss.

A few days after visiting the Bhaktivedanta Manor, on the outskirts of London, to celebrate Janmashtami in August, Sunak—who was in a pitched battle with Truss for the premiership—was seen worshiping a cow. A video of the incident became an instant hit on social media with Indians praising the significance of India’s rich cultural heritage.

In November 2020, the Indian diaspora in the UK praised Sunak for lighting oil lamps on the front step of 11 Downing Street. And gestures like taking oath as MP from Richmond for the third time while holding the Bhagavad Gita were praised too.

Indians and the Indian diaspora in the UK, however, should remember that Sunak is a practising Hindu and performing rituals and ceremonies is part of that practice—but that does not make him Indian.

First, Sunak is not an Indian indeed and his ancestral roots are in Gujranwala, north of Lahore, which was part of pre-Independence, undivided India but is now in Pakistan. His grandparents migrated to Nairobi, Kenya, in 1935-37 and his father was born there in 1949. Subsequently, he migrated to Liverpool, England, in 1966 and married Sunak’s Punjabi mother, who was born in Tanganyika (modern Tanzania).

Sunak was born in Southampton, England, in 1980, and completed his education at Winchester College and the University of Oxford—and is proud of his British education, friends and background.

In fact, after he announced his first candidacy for premiership in July, a clip from the BBC series Middle Classes: Their Rise and Sprawl in 2011 surfaced where he was seen boasting of his private education and Etonian friends and not having working class buddies.

I have friends who are aristocrats, I have friends who are upper class, I have friends who are working class … Well, not working class,” Sunak brags adding that one of his best friends studied at Eton College as his father grins.

“I am very lucky to have been at these places. It does put me in an elite in society,” the young Sunak says adding that he always considers himself “professional middle class”, but doesn’t “think being Asian is a defining feature”.

Second, lets us face it: Sunak has neither been elected by popular mandate nor the 1922 Committee—formally known as the Conservative Private Members’ Committee—an influential group of Conservative backbenchers who do not hold any government or Opposition posts but can mount a serious challenge to the PM and decide the next one.

A candidate must have the support of, at least, 100 Conservative MPs (excluding himself/herself). If more than one candidate gains 100 nominations, MPs vote to pick one of them. In case of three, the one with the fewest votes is eliminated. When two candidates remain, it is the about 160,000 rank-and-file party members, not the MPs, who decide on the next leader and PM in an online vote.

Since Sunak was the only candidate with the support of 100 out of 357 Tory MPs, he became the party leader and PM with Johnson and House of Commons leader Penny Mordaunt withdrawing earlier.

Therefore, Sunak’s elevation doesn’t symbolise some kind of racial revolution or a tectonic shift in British politics. It was evident when despite bagging 137 votes of MPs as against Truss’s 113 during the first leadership contest, he lost to her as the wider, disproportionately white, male and elderly party members preferred his white rival.

Sunak, who was the first Johnson Cabinet member to resign apparently over their “fundamentally different” approaches to solving the economic crisis, imperilling his boss’s future in the aftermath of Partygate, was supported by the MPs because of his integrity, professionalism and promising to “bring our party and country together” and not his ‘Indian’ lineage or skin colour.

After the maverick ‘Blonde Bombshell’ and the ‘Disruptor-in-chief’, the party was desperately looking for stability and unity and opted for Sunak.

Third, Sunak is a hardcore Tory who backed his party’s vociferous Brexit campaign to keep foreigners out; another Indian-origin home secretary Priti Patel’s Rwandan Asylum Plan, which was meant to deport new asylum-seekers to the African country; and the 2020 Johnson-appointed Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities, which ignored the institutional and structural racism in Britain and concluded that there is no evidence of the country being institutionally racist.

Indians and the UK’s Indian diaspora excited about Sunak’s blistering success and his so-called Indian roots shouldn’t forget that Patel, whose parents were Ugandan-Indian, had proposed to deport immigrants to Rwanda.

In fact, during his first leadership campaign, Sunak said that he will do “whatever it takes” to make the Rwandan plan work. “I will do whatever it takes to make the Rwanda plan work … as Prime Minister, that is what I will deliver.”

Fourth, unlike his predecessor, Sunak has already signalled that he wants to control immigration, according to the party’s 2019 election manifesto, which had committed to keep the numbers down till 2024.

“Meeting our manifesto commitments remains important. The Prime Minister has been very clear on that. And that relates to net migration as well, where we said it should come down,” the PM’s official spokesperson said.

Sunak is “committed to ensuring we have control over our borders and the public rightly expects us to control immigration and have a system that works best for the UK”, the spokesperson added.

Reiterating that Brexit’s main aim was to take back control of Britain’s borders, the manifesto promised to “introduce a firmer and fairer Australian-style points-based immigration system so that we can decide who comes to this country on the basis of the skills they have and the contribution they can make—not where they come from”.

The manifesto sought to establish “immigration controls” and end “freedom of movement”, which “attract the high-skilled workers we need to contribute to our economy”. “There will be fewer lower-skilled migrants and overall numbers will come down. And we will ensure that the British people are always in control,” the manifesto stated.

Fifth, the shock reappointment of former home secretary Suella Braverman, who openly slammed the in-the-works Free Trade Deal (FTA) between Britain and India and dreamed about seeing a flight take asylum-seekers to Rwanda clearly shows Sunak’s immigration stance.

In an interview with The Spectator magazine earlier this month, the Indian-origin Braverman expressed “reservations” about the FTA. While Truss wanted to sign the deal by Diwali—as agreed upon by Britain and India earlier—Braverman said, “I have concerns about having an open-borders migration policy with India because I don’t think that’s what people voted for with Brexit.”

Braverman pointed out to the number of Indians who overstay their visas. According to Home Office data, 20,706 Indians overstayed their visas in 2020. “Look at migration in this country—the largest group of people who overstay are Indian migrants.”

During a Tory conference earlier this month, Braverman said it is her “dream” and obsession to see a flight carrying asylum seekers take off to Rwanda. “I would love to have a front page of The Telegraph with a plane taking off to Rwanda. That’s my dream; it’s my obsession.”

At the same conference, Braverman revived a previous Tory pledge to reduce net migration from the current level of 239,000 to tens of thousands. “In the 90s, it was in the tens of thousands under Mrs [Margaret> Thatcher—net migration—and David Cameron famously said tens of thousands; no ifs, no buts. So, that would be my ultimate aspiration but we’ve got to take it slowly and we’ve got to go incrementally.”

Hardening her immigration stance, Braverman added, “I think we have got to definitely substantially reduce the number of students, the number of work visas and in particular the number of dependants on those sorts of visas.”

Sunak has been severely criticised across the UK political spectrum for reappointing Braverman, who had to quit the Truss government after using her personal mail to send a highly sensitive draft written statement on migration to a fellow MP and copying it to another MP by mistake.

Green Party MP Caroline Lucas tweeted that Sunak promised government “integrity, professionalism and accountability at every level” during lunchtime but appointed Braverman, who breached ministerial rules and dreams of deporting asylum-seekers to Rwanda, in the afternoon.

Labour MP Chris Bryant tweeted that the Braverman reappointment doesn’t show integrity, competence, professionalism or sensible politics. “It’s just cynical manoeuvring. This PM’s no better than the last two.”

Even during the Truss government, which was keen to sign the FTA with India, secretary of state for international trade Kemi Badenoch, said, “We want something comprehensive but it has to be right for both countries. We are not doing a unilateral, free-for-all deal.”

Badenoch, who is in charge of the FTA negotiations, told the Conservative Party annual conference in Birmingham that Britain “shouldn’t pretend that we are doing a full universal liberalisation of every single thing that can possibly be done and create a single market and freedom of movement etc with India”.

Finally, Sunak’s skin colour and his lineage don’t translate to his affinity to the Indian diaspora. While the symbolism in his becoming the most powerful man in the UK can’t be ignored, the bitter truth is that he doesn’t represent racial minorities in his country.

According to UK government statistics, Hindus constitute less than 2% of the population in England and Wales. Therefore, Sunak may worship a cow but he also promotes the beef industry despite not consuming the meat.

During the campaign for the first premiership contest in July, Sunak pledged an advertising campaign to promote the meat industry if he is elected PM.

“My constituency is home to hundreds of beef and lamb farmers and I am committed to supporting the fantastic industry they represent,” he had told The Daily Telegraph.

Powell’s party might have done the unimaginable by choosing the son of immigrants as PM but Indians shouldn’t forget Sunak is not pro-immigrant either. Foreign policies and bilateral ties are guided by the ideology of the party in power, economic and strategic interests and practicality, not by the skin colour of the head of the state or his/her lineage.

The writer is a freelance journalist with two decades of experience, and comments primarily on foreign affairs. Views expressed are personal

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