Hugh Sainsbury #FBPE @hughdorset.bsky.social

Helen Lewis, "Do you have to be white to be English?" Nadhim Zahawi, "I don't think you have to be white to be English" "If you are born and bred in England then you have every right to feel English" Helen Lewis, "You're going to disagree with Suella Braverman?" Nadhim Zahawi, "That's how I feel" My view: A rare moment where I agree with Nadhim Zahawi. Englishness should not be reduced to skin colour or ancestry. If someone is born and raised in England, feels English and identifies with the country, there is no credible reason to tell them that identity is unavailable to them because their parents or grandparents came from somewhere else. That is the problem with Suella Braverman’s argument. She is perfectly entitled to describe herself as British rather than English — identity is personal. But it is very different to turn that personal choice into a wider definition of Englishness based on ancestry or generations of lineage. That definition inevitably creates two classes of people born in the same country: those considered genuinely English and those who can apparently never become English, however many decades they and their families live here. Zahawi, who himself came to Britain from Iraq as a child, makes the much more inclusive distinction: you do not have to be white to be English, and people born and bred in England have every right to feel English. Nationality and cultural identity have never been frozen in time. England has been shaped for centuries by migration, intermarriage and changing communities. Making whiteness or distant ancestry the gatekeeper of Englishness excludes millions of people who were born here, grew up here and regard England as home.