Barring events entirely unforeseen, Boris Johnson is finished as the UK prime minister.
One of the main architects of the epochal blunder of Brexit, this egregiously shambolic -- but still dangerous -- individual has failed upwards throughout his career, but there's nowhere left to hide. Very soon, he will be gone.
Who is next? All indications are Rishi Sunak, the ruthlessly competent Chancellor of the Exchequer (the British equivalent of finance minister). This is not entirely unexpected -- indeed Sunak has been spoken about as a future prime minister from his school days -- but a meaningful development nonetheless.
In the 75th anniversary year of the end of the Raj, a son of the subcontinent is rising to lead the former colonial state.
Does Sunak's ethnicity matter, in any significant way?
This question is debated anew every time another member of the vast Indian diaspora emerges in leadership: Leo Varadkar of Ireland and Antonio Costa of Portugal (both of whose roots are on the Konkan coast), Kamala Harris in the US (whose mother emigrated from Tamil Nadu).
In this case, in multiple ways, it unquestionably does matter. For one thing, the 41-year-old's relationship with India isn't abstract: He's married to the daughter of Narayana Murthy, the billionaire founder of Infosys who is one of the most influential Indian businessmen.
In addition, unlike most diaspora politicians in the West -- think of fellow Punjabis like Piyush “Bobby” Jindal or Nimrata “Nikki” Haley -- Sunak has skated around pandering to cultural majoritarianism. In the last round of swearings-in at the House of Commons, for example, he took his oath on the Bhagavad Gita, but Cabinet colleagues Priti Patel (whose roots are in Gujarat) and Suella Braverman (Goa) chose the Bible and Dhammapada instead.
There's another commonality with Patel and Braverman. All three of these 21st century Conservative Party stars are descended from the tense, bitterly contested exodus of roughly 150,000 “Asians” (read: Indians) from former colonies in East Africa to the UK between 1967 and 1975.
Although just five decades ago, there is purposeful institutionalized forgetting about these annals of betrayal, with the nadir being the disgraceful 1968 Commonwealth Immigrants Act which unilaterally divested hundreds of thousands of people of their previously guaranteed right of entry to the UK.
The following month, Enoch Powell delivered his notorious Rivers of Blood speech, decrying the influx of migrants supposedly rendering people like him into “strangers in their own country.”
This unreconstructed imperialist (Powell spent the eve of India's “tryst with destiny” walking the London streets in anguish) complained: “We are seeing the growth of positive forces acting against integration, of vested interests in the preservation and sharpening of racial and religious differences, with a view to the exercise of actual domination, first over fellow immigrants and then over the rest of the population.”
In the aftermath of this racist diatribe, Powell became simultaneously by far the most popular politician in the UK and persona non grata amongst the establishment. But even if the man was ungently compelled to fade away -- he eventually switched loyalties to the Ulster Unionist Party -- his ideas remained.
Indeed, as The Observer's Nick Cohen has pointed out, Boris Johnson “offers a recrudescence” and Powell's own biographer Paul Colthorn agrees: “The age of Brexit is the age of Powell.”
How much more ironic can it get, than the grandson of East African Asian immigrants astride Powell's beloved Conservative Party?
“Poetic justice tends to win out in British history,” says Ben Judah, the outstanding British writer and journalist, whose 2020 Tatler profile pointed out:
“It's easy to forget just how extraordinary the rise of Rishi Sunak has been. Sunak became an MP only five years back. Less than a year ago, he was the most junior minister in the department for local government. Today, the chancellor battling the coronavirus fallout is tipped not only as a future prime minister, but Britain's first non-white leader.”
Judah says to me now, “it's undoubtedly important that Sunak is of Indian heritage. To me, it's the incredible narrative arc represented by his success. This Queen's first prime minister was Winston Churchill -- who once considered running under the election slogan of Keep England White -- so it would be quite fitting if the last one is actually of Indian heritage, signifying the ultimate defeat of those ideas.”
Back in 2015, Judah ventured to meet Sunak in “the England of hill farmers, poltergeist inns, and the safest Conservative seat in the country” where he sought election from a borough that was home to only 122 desis (and quickly sprouted a sizeable UKIP backlash).
At that time, he wrote in Politico: “A lot is riding on him [Sunak]: if the old party of Margaret Thatcher cannot appeal to England's booming South Asian middle bourgeoisie -- it will never win a majority again. There are now 168 seats where the minority population outnumbers the sitting MPs' majorities. To put it bluntly, without the Asian middle class the Tories are doomed.”
Looking back to that initial meeting, Judah says he immediately realized the spectacularly ambitious young British Indian politician could become prime minister, if -- a crucial if -- he managed to break out of his postcard perfect “Head Boy” persona to gamble big when it counted.
We could be on the threshold of that moment now, and an unprecedented crowning of the man who would not only be the first ethnic minority (whether or not you accept Benjamin Disraeli qualifies) but the youngest prime minister since 1783.
“When this era began in British politics,” says Judah, “I was really worried it would be defined by the attitude and vision of the likes of Nigel Farage, but if it ends with Boris thrown out, and Sunak in, and liberal Toryism winning, it will say a lot about the Britain that is finally emerging from that surge of English nationalism. We all know that Brexit has been economically bad, but culturally it has been an outright disaster. This will demonstrate there's important change, evolution, and progress continuing, and that British aspirations are still open to all.”
Vivek Menezes is a writer based in Goa, India.
