Immigrant vision powers the Tory machine

The Empire is coming home to roost – at least in the Conservative Party. Of the eleven declared candidates hoping to take over from Boris Johnson as Tory leader, six, including the bookies’ favourites, have their roots in what were formerly British colonies. 

No one mentions this. It is not talked about. It is as if the political class and commentariat are afraid of disturbing a hornets’ nest.  But the fact remains that while Britain as a whole is 85 per cent white, those leading the country’s most powerful political party are increasingly of Asian or African heritage. 

It is a tribute to the ambition – and talent – of immigrant families that so many of their sons and daughters have risen to the top of the Tory tree. They prove that there is nothing more important in building a career in the public eye than family values, hard work and a sound education. 

But what does it say about Britain’s native white population that it could end up influenced more and more by a political caste that for the most part only arrived here in the last 40 years and which, as it happens, is overwhelmingly anti-European and pro-Brexit? 

During the crisis that finally triggered Boris Johnson’s resignation, Tory MP after Tory MP, typically white men in crumpled suits aged around 60, appeared on our television screens to point out that enough was enough and the time had come to restore decency and competence in Downing Street. 

They all (and I write as a Remainer with left-leaning convictions) seemed to be to be decent and intelligent, with long experience of the Commons. In the war, most of them would have risen to be middle-ranking officers, doing their duty through gritted teeth.

With one or two exceptions, they have spent their entire parliamentary careers on the backbenches. None of them seemed to think it even remotely possible that they could be elected to the top job. No. Their interest lay in holding on to what they had already – a Westminster seat, a loyal following back home in their constituency and the prospect of a decent pension at the end of it.  

Perhaps ambition had been knocked out of them over the years as they were passed over again and again. Or maybe they accepted early on that they had fulfilled their natural potential as footsoldiers and spear carriers. I don’t know. 

What I do know is that this is not how the careers of their black and Asian colleagues go. 

Rishi Sunak, Priti Patel and Suella Braverman are of Indian heritage, by way of East Africa. Sajid Javid was born in Rochdale to parents who arrived in Lancashire from the Punjab.  Nadhim Zahawi is an Iraqi Kurd. Kemi Badenoch is Nigerian. Though only one of them, and perhaps none of them, will end up in Downing Street this time around, the near-certainty is that all of them will occupy senior positions in the next Tory Government.  

Hard-working and media-friendly, they say they are low-tax Tories determined to make Brexit work. But most of all, they lay claim to a patriotic vision of the UK that for many whose British roots go back centuries has seemed in recent decades to have slipped irrecoverably out of reach. 

This is what Kemi Badenoch, born in London to Nigerian parents, said in her maiden speech shortly after her election as MP for Saffron Walden: 

[The Brexit vote] “was the greatest ever vote of confidence in the project of the United Kingdom … The vision of global Britain as a project is, as a young African girl, [something] I dreamed of becoming part of. As a British woman, I now have the great honour of delivering that project for my constituents in the greatest Parliament on earth.” 

It is not hard to imagine Ms Badenoch curtseying respectfully to the Queen, and Her Majesty smiling broadly in response. 

Next, consider the words, of Nadhim Zahawi, who in 1978, aged eleven, arrived in London from his native Baghdad after his family was forced to flee the wrath of Saddam Hussein. He was speaking shortly after joining the Johnson cabinet in September 2021. 

“I was sat at the back of a classroom unable to speak a word of English. But with the support and guidance of my teachers I began to speak the language, think in the language and, most importantly of all, read the language … [because of] kind, patient, dedicated teachers, who threw open the doors of my mind, I am able to proudly stand before you as the MP for Shakespeare’s Stratford and the new Secretary of State for Education”. 

The image that arises in my head at least is of Zahawi shedding a tear as Land of Hope and Glory rings out at the Last Night of the Proms. 

Not many “native” English MPs can offer such compelling backstories. On the Tory side, those over 50 are for the most part a rum lot – mostly lawyers, bankers, financiers, farmers or businessmen, with “consultancy” and PR prominent in the CVs of the younger intake. The profile on the Labour benches used to be very different, with miners, steelworkers, trade unionists and teachers – leavened by a sprinkling of toffs and Oxbridge academics – making up the majority. 

Today, the only real distinction between the two is that the Tories are markedly more likely to promote women and ethnic minority MPs to the top jobs. Labour, post-Blair, has the edge when it comes to bums on seats in the Commons chamber, but the fact that the Tories have so far produced two women prime ministers and may be about to elect a third, and that six of the party’s eleven declared candidates would give Tommy Robinson heart failure, speaks for itself. 

The Labour shadow cabinet boasts only one black face, that of David Lammy, who is joined on the front bench by four women of Asian or part-Asian heritage: Shabana Mahmood, Rosena Allin-Khan, Preet Kaur Gill and Thangam Debbonaire – the last of whom for some reason changed her name from Singh. None is currently viewed as a likely successor to the party leadership in the event that Kier Starmer decides to quit. 

Viewed in the round, what is most astonishing is the incredible rise of the Asian lobby at Westminster and across the country – not least in the Sunday Times Rich List. It can only be a matter of time before Britain has its first Hindu or Muslim prime minister, with others following close behind.

If I were a betting man, I would put money on a swathe of Hongkong refugees following the same path over the next 20 years, along with more from Africa. While this fact speaks volumes for minority talent and drive, it can only add to the despair felt in poor white communities who, 75 years after the Union Flag was lowered for the last time in New Delhi’s Viceregal Palace, feel themselves increasingly left behind in their own country. 

Wouldn’t it be cheering, and sensible, not to say statesmanlike, if at least one of the majority minority candidates in the Tory leadership contest shouted out that levelling up is as much about white Britons as it is about immigrants or the Red Wall? David Cameron used to tell us that we are all in this together.

Maybe the time has come to show that together includes all of us, not just the ones who are rising fastest.