Sunder Katwala is Director of British Future.
The Conservative Party can hardly take too much pride from its performance in government this year. But Rishi Sunak becoming Britain’s first post-war ethnic minority prime minister is an important landmark moment in British social and political history.
The dizzying chaos in government has produced, within two months, both the third female premier and now the first British Indian one too.
That Britain has a Hindu prime minister is undoubtedly a bigger theme in the Indian press than it is in Britain. And the Conservatives’ choice of a British Asian leader to be the next to try to navigate post-Brexit Britain’s travails may seem more counter-intuitive on the European continent, where no other centre-right party has anything like the ethnic diversity of the modern Tories.
The official – and correct – line is that we should not pay too much attention to the ethnic or faith background of a prime minister. Six out of ten people thought that it was irrelevant, when British Future asked about views of a hypothetical ethnic minority premier in our Jubilee Britain research earlier this year.
Over a quarter of people thought an ethnic minority prime minister would be an actively positive development, while a surly fringe of one in ten saw it as a negative development.
But trying not to notice the historic nature of this moment would be to take things too far. If the aim is for fair chances and no unfair barriers for those of every colour and creed, it matters to notice important progress towards that goal. An Asian or Black prime minister was improbable, if not impossible, at the turn of the century. It was enormously less likely as recently as 2015.
When Sunak was born in Southampton in 1980, there had been no Asian or Black MPs at all in the first decades since the Windrush had docked at Tilbury in 1948. There was a longer history of ethnic diversity in British politics, but it was a thin thread.
As well as our first ethnic minority prime minister, Benjamin Disraeli, in the 1860s, the very first Asian Tory MP was elected as long ago as 1895. Sir Mancherjee Bhownaggree made the type of pro-Empire and anti-immigration pitch in Bethnal Green that could make Suella Braverman look woke by comparison.
But it took almost a century for him to have a successor, with Nirj Deva representing Brentwood in 1992, before being swept away in the New Labour landslide.
So when Sunak did work experience at CCHQ, and graduated from university in 2001, there was still not a single black or Asian Conservative MP in the House of Commons. The widespread assumption was that all of the ethnic diversity in British politics would be found on the left.
It surprises many people to realise that there were no British Asian Cabinet ministers until Sayeeda Warsi in 2010. Sajid Javid was the first Asian MP to enter the Cabinet as late as 2014. Sunak was himself just the fifth Asian Cabinet minister when he became Chancellor during the pandemic.
Ethnic diversity may have become the new normal at the top of British politics, with a flurry of ethnic minority chancellors and home secretaries in the last five years, but diversity becoming a norm at the top is a significant, rapid and remarkably recent change in British politics.
This rising share of voice, power and presence has several causes. It reflects the educational and professional success of second and third generation Britons, who are the children and grandchildren of Commonwealth migrants. The rapid acceleration of cross-party diversity reflects David Cameron’s successful effort to shift the culture of his party.
Very little attention has been paid to Sunak’s Hindu faith, either during his spell as chancellor or during his bids to be prime minister. Since Disraeli converted to Anglicanism as a teenager, Sunak will be the first inhabitant of 10 Downing Street to practice a non-Christian minority faith. Tony Blair waited until he had left Downing Street to become a Roman Catholic. Boris Johnson did not, though he did not pretend to have a serious Christian faith.
That Sunak will be the prime minister during the King’s Coronation in May tells an important story about change in Britain across the generations. It may help to illuminate the case for the new King’s approach – blending his obligations as Head of the Established Church with his sense of a duty to protect diversity, reflecting the modern reality of Britain as a society of many faiths and none.
His Majesty says that diversity needs to be underpinned by a collective commitment to freedom of conscience, generosity of spirit and care for others. Sunak, facing the toughest inheritance of any peacetime prime minister, would welcome an outbreak of that sentiment in Westminster too.
Sunder Katwala is Director of British Future.
The Conservative Party can hardly take too much pride from its performance in government this year. But Rishi Sunak becoming Britain’s first post-war ethnic minority prime minister is an important landmark moment in British social and political history.
The dizzying chaos in government has produced, within two months, both the third female premier and now the first British Indian one too.
That Britain has a Hindu prime minister is undoubtedly a bigger theme in the Indian press than it is in Britain. And the Conservatives’ choice of a British Asian leader to be the next to try to navigate post-Brexit Britain’s travails may seem more counter-intuitive on the European continent, where no other centre-right party has anything like the ethnic diversity of the modern Tories.
The official – and correct – line is that we should not pay too much attention to the ethnic or faith background of a prime minister. Six out of ten people thought that it was irrelevant, when British Future asked about views of a hypothetical ethnic minority premier in our Jubilee Britain research earlier this year.
Over a quarter of people thought an ethnic minority prime minister would be an actively positive development, while a surly fringe of one in ten saw it as a negative development.
But trying not to notice the historic nature of this moment would be to take things too far. If the aim is for fair chances and no unfair barriers for those of every colour and creed, it matters to notice important progress towards that goal. An Asian or Black prime minister was improbable, if not impossible, at the turn of the century. It was enormously less likely as recently as 2015.
When Sunak was born in Southampton in 1980, there had been no Asian or Black MPs at all in the first decades since the Windrush had docked at Tilbury in 1948. There was a longer history of ethnic diversity in British politics, but it was a thin thread.
As well as our first ethnic minority prime minister, Benjamin Disraeli, in the 1860s, the very first Asian Tory MP was elected as long ago as 1895. Sir Mancherjee Bhownaggree made the type of pro-Empire and anti-immigration pitch in Bethnal Green that could make Suella Braverman look woke by comparison.
But it took almost a century for him to have a successor, with Nirj Deva representing Brentwood in 1992, before being swept away in the New Labour landslide.
So when Sunak did work experience at CCHQ, and graduated from university in 2001, there was still not a single black or Asian Conservative MP in the House of Commons. The widespread assumption was that all of the ethnic diversity in British politics would be found on the left.
It surprises many people to realise that there were no British Asian Cabinet ministers until Sayeeda Warsi in 2010. Sajid Javid was the first Asian MP to enter the Cabinet as late as 2014. Sunak was himself just the fifth Asian Cabinet minister when he became Chancellor during the pandemic.
Ethnic diversity may have become the new normal at the top of British politics, with a flurry of ethnic minority chancellors and home secretaries in the last five years, but diversity becoming a norm at the top is a significant, rapid and remarkably recent change in British politics.
This rising share of voice, power and presence has several causes. It reflects the educational and professional success of second and third generation Britons, who are the children and grandchildren of Commonwealth migrants. The rapid acceleration of cross-party diversity reflects David Cameron’s successful effort to shift the culture of his party.
Very little attention has been paid to Sunak’s Hindu faith, either during his spell as chancellor or during his bids to be prime minister. Since Disraeli converted to Anglicanism as a teenager, Sunak will be the first inhabitant of 10 Downing Street to practice a non-Christian minority faith. Tony Blair waited until he had left Downing Street to become a Roman Catholic. Boris Johnson did not, though he did not pretend to have a serious Christian faith.
That Sunak will be the prime minister during the King’s Coronation in May tells an important story about change in Britain across the generations. It may help to illuminate the case for the new King’s approach – blending his obligations as Head of the Established Church with his sense of a duty to protect diversity, reflecting the modern reality of Britain as a society of many faiths and none.
His Majesty says that diversity needs to be underpinned by a collective commitment to freedom of conscience, generosity of spirit and care for others. Sunak, facing the toughest inheritance of any peacetime prime minister, would welcome an outbreak of that sentiment in Westminster too.