IT’S EMMA RADUK ANU!
Tennis sensation shows the home nations share values, claims former PM Brown
TENNIS sensation Emma Raducanu is helping to show the UK nations are ‘moving closer together’, claimed Gordon Brown.
The former Prime Minister highlighted the US Open-winning star as he stressed that people across the UK share ‘basic values’.
He said high-profile personalities such as England football boss Gareth Southgate and player Marcus Rashford, right, help banish the perception from some in Scotland that England is full of ‘toffs and football hooligans’.
His comments came as his think-tank published research which identified similar views on equality, tolerance, liberty and diversity and issues such as the NHS. Mr Brown said: ‘If people think that Scotland and England are moving apart, when it comes to basic values, they are moving closer together.’ He highlighted Mr Southgate’s ‘letter to England’ in the run-up to Euro2020, when he set out key values his players would promote, and said these are shared by people in Scotland and Wales. He added: ‘It challenges nationalists, who will now find it more difficult to claim Scots have little in common with the England of Southgate and Rashford.
‘You can be Muslim, British and English and feel comfortable with these identities or you could be a tennis player born in Canada from parents from China and Romania and that tennis player can become a British sporting icon overnight.’
But Nationalist MSP Rona Mackay said: ‘Labour’s denial of Scotland’s right to choose an independent future serves only to enable (Boris) Johnson to inflict further damage on the people of this country.’