Brexit, Tory Britain could teach the EU a thing or two about diversity
This field of leadership contenders makes a mockery of the notion that the UK is “racist”
BThe next PM will almost certainly be a 40-something woman – white or Nigerian – or an Asian man
rexit was always going to be taken by the usual suspects – the UN, the EU, snooty “liberal” American broadsheets, wannabe European Brits with houses in France – as evidence of a Great British racism. The UN claimed we had become “more racist after Brexit”, The Guardian kept publishing “evidence” of Britain’s surging racism (the number of visas granted to non-EU migrants actually went up after Brexit), coastal Americans, especially those at The New York Times, The Washington Post and NPR (National Public Radio), took it as read that Britain was tilting towards Trumpstyle white supremacist populism, and Jean-Claude Juncker pledged, following the murder of a Polish man in Essex in August 2016, that the EU would “never” tolerate racist abuse against its citizens on British streets, making out that this hideous crime was the new business as usual.
Brexit Britain: a racist backwater run by terrible racist Right-wing toffs.
And yet, these so-called racist Right-wingers have produced – organically, without endless selfaggrandising declarations about diversity and identity – a shortlist for would-be prime minister that has a higher percentage of black and brown people for the top job than any of the West has ever seen. Higher than Labour, higher than any American shortlist on the Right or Left, and, one can’t help but note, higher than anything the EU has ever managed. Even The New York Times, long lost down a vortex of wokesoaked ideology, grudgingly admitted that “the candidates fighting to replace Boris Johnson as Conservative Party leader and Britain’s prime minister reflect the
country’s rich diversity… with six having recent ancestors hailing from outside Europe.”
Incidentally, this is also a more socially diverse contest, with much less Oxbridge, and no Eton (though Sunak went to Winchester and low-hoper Tom Tughenhadt to St Paul’s).
The great and the good of Europe and the US like to berate us with racism, but they should look to themselves first, and specifically to their political elite, eg the people that hold real power in a society.
After Brexit, the number of ethnic minorities in the European Parliament dropped by 20 per cent. At seven, the UK had the highest number of ethnic minority MEPs in 2019, with only 13 of the 27 member states selecting any at all. The parliament also lost all six Asian MEPs after Britain’s departure. “Brexit day is a sad day for racial diversity in the EU,” said Karen Taylor, chair of the European Network Against Racism. The EU does not collect official data on its workforce, but the group said “anecdotal evidence suggests that the few members of staff of racial or ethnic minority background are often from the United Kingdom”.
Funny that while Britain was being pilloried for its “racist” decision to leave the EU, it was the most counter-racist force in the EU. Even now, it has the most substantial integration of minorities and migrants into the elite of any country in the European West.
That this coincides with sustained Tory rule – even Brexit Tory rule – is no coincidence. It’s a persistent pain in the Left’s side that Brexit-supporting Tories repeatedly produce more women and ethnic minorities in the very top rungs, including the topmost rung. But given that the Left expects those it purports to serve, and who may feel guilty for forsaking it, to revel in victimhood, the Tories’ comparative diversity at the top is no surprise. Left-wing minorities will get the party’s support on identitarian grounds, but only if they forswear regressive causes like making money and freedom of speech. It’s dreary. The Right, by contrast, lets candidates openly pursue both common-sense aims and self-interest. Which migrants – some of whom have had to work double- or triple-hard in all senses – appreciate. Spending their energy raging about “systemic racism” doesn’t serve their aims, drive, ambition or vision which, there’s no way about it, took root in horrible old Britain.
It’s not just in the tick-box metrics of identity politics that Tory leadership hopefuls do well. Crucially, and in stark contrast to the US in particular, the candidates do not wheel themselves out to score social justice points against the apparently “systemically” racist country in which they rose to the top.
In the Tory race, from those that have been knocked out or quit (Suella Braverman and Baghdad-born Nadhim Zahawi) to those still in the game (Kemi Badenoch and Rishi Sunak) there is sharp hunger. It is rooted not in the sort of manipulative, faux-resentment shown by American superstars senators Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez or Ilhan Omar, but in an extraordinary self-belief that “racist” Britain somehow failed to stamp out.
Nigerian-born Kemi Badenoch – my personal favourite, partly for her head girl-esque vibe and partly for her freshness – does, in fact, capitalise on the fact that she is black. But only because she has to: reversing the devastating logics of critical race theory and social justice ideology – one of her strongest suits – requires firing on all pistons, as Badenoch understands. If being black and African-born forces people to listen, so be it. Even then it’s an uphill struggle.
The next PM will almost certainly be a 40-something woman – white or Nigerian – or an Asian man. If the Remainer Left, the UN, coastal progressives in the US and EU evangelists were serious about countering racism, they would not only be cheering Britain and its Tory party, but desperately trying to figure out how to be more like it.