Rishi Sunak's Mistake
The challenges of being an outsider and why it is going to be hard for Rishi Sunak to win the British Prime Minister's race
If you haven’t been keeping up with the news from across the pond, the British are going through another round of political paroxysms. Their Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who helped drive the movement for Brexit was forced to resign for…being himself, a not particularly ethical, self-obsessed pomposity. The Conservative Tory Party is in charge and by their rules, their Members of Parliament vote to select the top two candidates for the now vacant Prime Minister’s position. Then the registered party members among the general public vote to determine who of these two will become the new Prime Minister and leader of Britain.
The final two candidates in the running are Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak. Liz Truss has had a typical WASP-ish rise in British politics - white woman born in Oxford, studied at Oxford and then risen through the ranks of the British Tory Party. Rishi on the other hand is British-Indian with an African angle too. He was born in Southhampton to Punjabi immigrants from…Kenya and Tanzania. His grandparents are from India.
For those who don’t know, many Indians moved to Africa to work in various industries that were part of the British Empire. After the sun set on the Empire and the colonies won their independence, some of these Indians were driven out of Africa by the new rulers, others choose to migrate to the Mother Country. Idi Amin’s imfamous ethnic cleansing of the Indians from Uganda is a prime example. (Mira Nair’s Mississipi Masala is a touching fictional story of one such family.)
Rishi too studied at Oxford and then did an MBA from Stanford University. Highly educated, these two. Rishi has also been serving as the Chancellor of the Exchequer in the Johnson Goverment, effectively being the No 2 man in Britain, while Liz Truss was the Foreign Minister. Rishi was the first choice of the Tory Member’s of Parliament. Surely he should have the edge?
Not quite - the arcane rules of the Tory Party means the members of the Party do the final vote and they tend to lean older and let’s just say be more stuck in their ways. Britain was notoriously racist in the days gone by. The world has changed and it has changed too or has it? Is it now open enough to accept a British Indian as their leader? Does Rishi’s British Indian-ness matter? Let’s take a look.
Sunak did not do himself any favors with some own goals. He received heat about the tax status of his wife Akshaya Murthy and for the fact that he held an American Green Card for quite a while during his political life. This seems a small thing but it might reveal a lot about this question of acceptance. What does it tell us?
First we should note that however odd it seems that a top British politician should be holding an American Green Card this is not quite a egregious as the ousted Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s actions - he remained a dual citizen, holding an American passport along with his British one even after became the Prime Minister and felt no need to do anything about it. Until…he had to pay American taxes on a house he sold. At this point he relinquished his American citizenship. ( I did note he is a narcissistic pomposity.)
While we can ultimately can’t know for sure the specific motives, this looks like a classic case of the insider v/s the outsider. Boris has the arrogance of the insider - the one who believes they own the place by their birthright. He doesn’t need to apologize for anything - all is owed to them anyway, at least in his head.
Rishi on the other hand seems to exude the energy of the outsider as we can see from his demeanor and body language in this interview with Spectator TV. He seems to be pleading for his place - give me a chance and I will prove what I am worth. He is defensive about being British-Indian. He awkwardly reemphasizes his Britishness. When asked about where he stands on the merit of the British Empire he exudes more awkwardness. It doesn’t help that his interviewer is old England, one steeped in old English attitudes. However it is these old Englanders he has impress.
Growing up as an outsider makes you tough - and with a current of insecurity running through everything you do. Rishi can properly be considered Macaulay’s grandchild. For those who don’t know, Thomas Babington Macaulay was a 19th century British administrator who sought to create in India a system of schooling that would create a class of Indians who were Indian in appearance but British in taste, style and character i.e. Indians who were raised to prefer being British. (Please note that while the British were building these schools they were also destroying the local schooling system.)
This system of schooling was implemented in other parts of the Empire too. I am a product of this schooling as is Salman Rushdie, who captured the psyche of this class of people beautifully in his award winning book Midnight’s Children. When the Empire ended these children had to choose to either remain in the now free colonies where they would eventually become outsiders or move to the mother country Britain where they would unfortunately also be outsiders.
As I wrote before, Modi’s rise to power in India in 2014 was a major milestone in this shift; prior to his rise India had been governed by Macaulay’s children. Modi is from the other India, the one that didn’t participate in this education system, that doesn’t aspire to be British, that is steeped in old Indian values, the vast majority of the Indian population actually.
Macaulay’s children have the underlying sense of insecurity of the outsider whether they are in India, Britain or as is often the case these days, America. Hence the need for safety valves - having residency permits in various parts of the world in case there is trouble where they happen to be. Salman Rushdie captured this beautifully in his follow up to Midnight’s Children, The Moor’s Last Sigh.
In this novel the protagonist is warned by his father - with India’s Independence, which the father himself has fought for, India will no longer be the domain for Macaulay’s children like them. The ‘other’ India will assert itself eventually and our protagonist may find he no longer has a place in this different culture with different values. So his father gives him an open air ticket - should trouble come, he can get on a plane and escape. As the story goes, eventually the time comes when the protagonist has to take the escape.
We don’t know for sure why Rishi got an American Green Card, he would know, however this pattern is de rigueur for Macaulay’s children. Study in America and get your Green Card so you always have the option to go back to live there if you want to. You get another escape route. For Boris Johnson on the other hand, the American passport is just another thing he is entitled to.
Whether the British(or the Tory party members at least) are ready to vote a British Indian to be the leader of Britain we will find out soon enough. However, in general people don’t vote for outsiders as their leaders. They vote for the one whom they think can be their boss, the alpha. This is Rishi’s big mistake. He is trying too hard to fit in. No one questioned Boris’ American passport. Why should they question his loyalty then?
He would have been better served by laughing the interviewer off - questions about the Empire? Who the hell cares? The Empire ended a long time ago. Today’s pressing problems need attention. And he would have been better off letting go of his Green Card a long time ago, though instead of trying to come up some rationale and excuse he should have just laughed that off too.
For that matter he should have laughed off the furor over his wife’s tax status as well. His wife Akshata is the daughter of Narayana one of the founders of the the Indian software giant Infosys. With her inheritance she will be richer than the Queen of England. She lives with Rishi in England now, however is still an Indian citizen and is entitled to and had claimed non-dom status in Britain i.e. although she currently lives in England she isn’t really a resident there, her primary home is still India. This is an arrangement that allows her to not have to pay tax on her considerable Indian income.
It is certainly strange that the wife of the Chancellor of the Exchequer would claim to not actually be domiciled in Britain, but not that much stranger than Boris Johnson having an American passport. Rishi should have laughed off this brouhaha too. They setup their affairs legally with their own self-interest in mind as we all too. Tory Party members would have respected that naked self-interest much more than any excuses.
As an outsider how do you get to a space where you can laugh all this off? By having a very solid inner container, by being well integrated inside. When you are no longer trying to fit in you can laugh off all the attacks. Now this is a bit of armchair pychology, yes, however it could be quite on point.
So it looks tough for Rishi. He can take heart though that British politics is dog eat dog and Prime Minster’s fall like nine pins. The latest PM has to deal with all the economic problems Britain is going through and will likely lose the next election. He may have dodged a bullet and can come back to fight another day.
A side note - it is interesting that Macaulay’s children are stepping off the stage of power in India (or at least learning how to share it), at the same time as Macaulay’s children (and their descendants) are stepping onto the stage of power in Britain. What would Macaulay think of this turn in history? Something to ponder.