This week, controversy blew up when Konstantin Kisin debated with the Spectator’s notoriously liberal Fraser Nelson whether Rishi Sunak is English. For Kisin, Sunak – like himself – was British, but his ancestry and cultural markers precluded him from being English. This debate reminds me of the film Groundhog Day: it pops up with depressing regularity, but never seems to get anywhere.
Is Sunak English? As someone who has written on, researched and taught ethnicity and national identity for 30 years, I think I can speak authoritatively on this.
As I posted on X (yes, mea culpa, I reposted myself!), the matter seems quite simple. Sunak is English by nationality, as well as a British national.
However, he is not a member of the English ethnic majority within England, nor is he part of the 80% white British pan-ethnic majority of the United Kingdom.
In these debates, it’s vital to begin with some basic terms. Type concepts, like elements in a periodic table, measure something real in the world, a clustering of statistically unlikely values of variables. Instead of valence and atomic weight for the elements, think degree of territoriality, shared ancestry and memory, and externally observable cultural markers.
Ethnic groups are communities which believe themselves to be descended from common ancestors. Jews claim descent from the 12 tribes of Israel and Abraham. Turks trace their ancestry to the central Asian Turks, Hungarians to the Hungarian tribes of the central Asian steppes.
Many groups cherish a myth of fusion: the English are a blend of Anglo-Saxons (themselves a blend) and Celtic Britons, the French a mix of Gauls and Franks, the Scots a blend of Celtic Scotii settlers from Ireland and native Picts. It’s worth saying that many contributions are airbrushed out (Huguenots? Normans? Vikings?) because our affective attachments can only really zero in on a few key strands.
Gestalt psychology means we view a blend of parts as an undifferentiated whole, and that we screen out a lot of information to focus on a few lineages. One day, most of the multicultural diversity in Western countries will be absorbed and forgotten. English is a gestalt.
Ethnic groups are principally defined in subjective terms, but also have external markers which help delineate members of the community. These are typically religion (e.g. Irish Catholics and British Protestants in Ulster), language (e.g. Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians) and physical appearance (such as black and white Protestant Americans in the US South).
In Britain, the native ethnic groups are delineated by surname, accent and, to some degree, religious sect (i.e., Anglican English, Presbyterian Scots, Methodist Welsh, Catholic Irish, or lapsed versions thereof). Physical appearance and religion are becoming more important as ways of distinguishing native from immigrant groups.
So we have the ethnic English, who form around 70% of England, ethnic Scots, who comprise 85% of Scotland, and ethnic Welsh, who are only half of Wales because of all the English and Irish who moved to work in industrial South Wales in the past. In Northern Ireland, the Irish Catholics and Ulster-British Protestants – who descend from early 1600s English and Scottish settlers – are roughly equal in size, a big change from 1965 when Protestants outnumbered Catholics 65-35.
Now for state and nation. Let’s zoom out to Britain, the highest level. This is the state – the political unit – that governs the British Isles. A state is a set of institutions that has a monopoly on the use of force – military and police – in a territory. It has exact borders and institutions of government: it’s a territorial-political unit.
England, by contrast, is a territorial, historical and cultural, but only vaguely political, unit. That is, it has no government, but has a political tradition predating the formation of Great Britain in 1707. It has given rise to a territorial community of memory and culture, with identity markers such as the George Cross and English accent (or family of accents).
A stickler for definitions would say that a nation must have political ambitions, but the domination of Britain by England (English make up 85% of Britain’s population) means that England can express its political control through Britain. This explains why British and English symbols are fused in the English mind to the point they see the two as interchangeable. Simply by changing the order of national identity choices in the census to put ‘British’ at the top instead of ‘English’ (see below), England’s statistical agency increased the share identifying as British from roughly 20% in 2011 to 55% in 2021. English identity fell by the same amount. Many were indifferent between the two so chose the first option that seemed to make sense.
States like Britain seek to create British national identity from the top down, through institutions such as the NHS, BBC, military, state schools and the monarchy.
Nations like England, by contrast, emerge more from the uncoordinated actions of individuals, market forces and the media. As people watch rugby or football, observe their green and pleasant landscape, eat fish and chips or drink real ale, wear flat caps and produce distinctively English musical styles including mod, punk and grime, they produce and consume English national identity.
Historic buildings like Anglican churches and National Trust stately homes, documents such as Magna Carta and the events of English history also inform the English identity. If Britain is a top-down state-led nation, England is a bottom-up nation whose identity inheres in everyone and no one, created by many individuals, cultural outlets and groups interpreting English history and distinctiveness whilst also reproducing that particularity. A flock of birds which produces a higher-level pattern rather than a military formation following orders.
So for people in England, there is a top-down state-led British national identity and a bottom-up ‘everyday’ English national identity.
Ethnicity informs nationhood. In ethnic terms, the ethnic majority population, like the landscape, architecture or traditions, helps to define what makes the nations of England, Scotland and Wales distinct. In Northern Ireland, the presence of Catholics and Protestants helps to define Northern Irish identity. At the level of Britain, the white British pan-ethnic majority contributes to the uniqueness of British national identity.
The next question is how individuals like Rishi Sunak relate to British and English national and ethnic identities.
First off, Sunak’s accent and mannerisms mark him out as English as well as British in terms of national identity. I have little doubt he identifies as such. Sunak is English by nationality.
However, his ethnocultural markers – surname, religion, physical appearance – place him outside both the English ethnic majority and the white British pan-ethnic majority that encompasses ethnic English, Scots, Welsh and Northern Irish Catholics and Protestants. I very much doubt he would tick the ‘White British’ box on the census. Sunak is not English by ethnicity.
There is of course the tricky question of the blurring of ethnic boundaries through intermarriage. Half of people in England and Wales have four grandparents born in England, but the other half do not, and many of these identify as white British. There is, for instance, a substantial Irish Catholic component in the white British population in North West England and in urban areas.
Having an Irish surname and Catholic religious background could place someone outside the bounds of Englishness or Scottishness as recently as the 1990s. In southern England, anti-Catholicism was weakest, and part-Irish James Callaghan served without fanfare as Prime Minister in the 1970s. Notwithstanding this, I recall being on the Tube in the early 1990s, before people were all glued to their phones. I heard a woman say to her friend that they were surprised that Americans boasted about their Irish heritage whereas “here if you’re Irish you try to hide it”. That attitude has faded because the Troubles in Northern Ireland ended in the 90s while Irish Brits have experienced upward mobility.
The country reverted to its prior assimilationist trend in the 90s. So many English people with Irish surnames and a Catholic background are the offspring of mixed marriages with those of English ethnicity that it’s impossible to know at first glance if a Catholic person with an Irish surname is in fact ethnically Irish. So they are taken for English. Regionally, the North West, around Liverpool, has the highest share of Irish surnames, and a lot of Catholics, but very few who identify their ethnicity as Irish on the census. In London, by contrast, those with Irish origins tend to proclaim themselves Irish by ethnicity.
The map below shows the relationship between the share identifying as ethnically Irish on the census and the proportion of Irish surnames in an area. Liverpool surnames are 16% Irish but just 2% of its population identify as ethnically Irish on the census. In Islington, North London, 7% have Irish surnames but fully 5% identify as ethnically Irish. The difference is accounted for by the way people in the two places select from among their ancestral options. London urban liberals tend to select away from Englishness.
Many British Jews also identify as white British on the census and so do many offspring of mixed white British-European origin. Boris Johnson, David Cameron and Peter Mandelson are examples. In other cases, such as the Jewish Nigel Lawson and Michael Howard, surnames have been anglicised over time.
What we have here are individuals who objectively possess the markers of ethnic Englishness, but may subjectively identify with different lineages in their personal genealogy. This tells us that part of whether someone is ethnically English is that they ‘pass’ by possessing the main external markers of this ethnicity – English-sounding surname and accent, white racial appearance. Those who pass as such and identify with their English descent are properly classified as ethnically English, those who do not identify with their English origins belong to a different ethnic group.
We know that when people have options in their ancestry, the exotic background is often chosen rather than majority ethnicity because in a liberal culture that values diversity that is viewed as more distinctive. Hence Mary Waters found that white Americans with Italian heritage were more likely to identify as Italian than their other parts, while those of Scottish background identified with their non-Scottish origins. This represents a change from the pre-1960s period when those of part ‘old American’ background were more likely to identify with the WASP majority.
Politics increasingly matters for ethnic choice, with Brexit supporters undoubtedly more likely to identify as English than Remain voters with the same background – as the Islington example above illustrates. In the US, those of white-Hispanic ‘Spanglo’ ancestry are more likely to identify as white if they are Republican, Hispanic if Democratic. In the 19th century, Whigs identified with the plebeian Anglo-Saxons, Tories with the Norman heritage of the imperial line.
This begs the question of how mixed-race English individuals such as Calvin Robinson, Sunder Katwala, Ben Habib or Matthew Syed identify. I haven’t asked them, but surveys tell us that 35% of people with a mixed-race background in England identify as White British on the census. I’d wager that, in their hearts, at least one of the Right-leaning Habib, Robinson and Syed see themselves as ethnically English. Partly this depends on whether others accept them as such. How others categorise you affects how you see yourself, but there is still wiggle room based on what you find appealing.
At one time in the US, a ‘one-drop‘ rule operated in which even miniscule black heritage (but not Amerindian background) disqualified a person from being considered white. Having said this, plenty of light-skinned blacks passed as socially white. Today, white-Asian offspring are more likely to identify as white than white-black offspring in part because black identity in the US has always spanned a wide racial spectrum and this seems to affect the way Americans categorise people with some visible African origin.
It is not clear that the same holds in Britain, where black-white intermarriage is very common and light-skinned individuals with black ancestors such as UKIP MEP Steven Woolfe or football player Kieran Trippier would generally be considered part of the ethnic majority regardless of how they personally identify.
The blurring of race at the edges through intermarriage will matter a lot in the future, and it interests people like me who are of mixed background. But at present it is rare: 97% of people in England are of single racial origin. For them, categorisation is pretty straightforward.
Bottom line: Sunak is English by nationality, but not by ethnicity.
Eric Kaufmann is Professor of Politics at the University of Buckingham and Director of the Centre for Heterodox Social Science. He specialises in nationalism, the cultural Left and political demography. Subscribe to his Substack page, where this article first appeared.
Stop Press: Suella Braverman, the former Conservative Home Secretary, explains in the Telegraph why she “will never be truly English“. “I don’t feel English because I have no generational ties to English soil, no ancestral stories tied to the towns or villages of this land. My heritage, with its rich cultural and racial identity, is something distinct. I am British Asian, and I feel a deep love, gratitude and loyalty to this country. But I cannot claim to be English, nor should I. This is not exclusionary – it is honest. And it’s what living in a multi-ethnic society entails.”
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It’s actually best to click the link and read the full article for context because it’s easy to jump to conclusions and minimize this young lady’s experience. I think the thing this guy did wrong, well, after basically singling her out to act in such an inappropriate and unprofessional manner, was to ‘ghost’ her and stop giving her any shifts. When he overheard her on the CCTV confiding in colleagues about how creepy he was being only with her that should’ve been a wake-up call that he was out of order and over stepping the mark as her boss. He should’ve stopped being a sleaze, apologized for his behaviour, which obviously wasn’t welcome and made her feel uncomfortable, then he should’ve went ahead and treat her exactly like her colleagues.
So at first I was like, ”Only in Clown World does somebody think getting an extra 20 quid is harassment”, but there’s much more to it than that. I think the reason, as stated in the article, she went ahead for the sexual harassment claim as opposed to unfair dismissal is that she hadn’t worked there long enough to make a claim for the latter. He’d done it with a previous female staff member but if the staff just up and leave then he’s never going to be held to account and change his behaviour going forward. Well it looks like he might think twice before being a perv with any future staff and abusing his authority, which he obviously enjoyed doing.
She tried both sexual harrasment and unfair dismissal. The latter complaint was dismissed because she hadn’t been working there for long enough.
I concluded just from this article that the guy’s a slimeball.
Me too
I’m not keen on the micro regulation of workplace behaviour but other than leaving to find a job with a better employer I think her options were limited unless she is in a trade union but they probably wouldn’t hold much sway in a small business
I think what she did took guts, more guts than merely leaving and basically allowing him to behave this way continuously with future victims he singles out. By winning her case she’s presumably broken the cycle and the creep will think twice in future. He was blatantly grooming her, telling her to keep the fact he gave her extra cash a secret etc, so I’m very glad she listened to her intuition and didn’t accept any lifts from him. People, females especially, need to listen to their gut instinct ( their lizard brain, in reality ) and if something doesn’t feel right then it usually isn’t. Being all agreeable and thinking something won’t happen to you can be your downfall.
I generally agree and you make some good points. She could have left and left some online reviews calling him out- I like the idea of the market taking care of things like this- but I accept it’s not easy. I don’t think I’ve paid anyone (male or female) at work a compliment about their eyes or anything similar in the 38 years I have been there. I may remark on them looking smart or well but nothing beyond that. I don’t think winking necessarily constitutes inappropriate behaviour but it depends on the context and in this case it’s part of a much wider pattern.
Well-said. The ever-insightful Gavin de Becker would certainly agree with you.
Well look at the title; ”Winking at a female employee can be sexual harassment”, and we are presumably supposed to form a certain opinion based on the insinuation of that sentence. So that’s why I thought I’d beat the resident misogynists and advise people to read the DM article in order to get the bigger picture before making a judgment, seeing as it was a lot more than some over-sensitive snowflake girl taking offense and playing her ”victim card” because her boss winked at her.
The article was almost certainly written by someone who wanted to support the women’s side of the story. Stripped of all the decorations, it’s (almost certainly) “middle-aged married guy making clumsy attempts to flirt with a much younger woman and floundering spectacularly at that”. Which immediately leads to the question: “What did the women do to motivate this guy to make a total ass of himself in such a hopeless and expensive way?”
Viewed objectively, he didn’t do anything justifying actual outrage and she never really told him off, she just made fun of him when she thought he wouldn’t notice because she hadn’t noticed the CCTV camera. She then voluntarily stopped working there “for her exams” and called the guy again afterwards as she wanted to have more shifts. Having finally wised up to the situation and with a bit of distance, he chose to let the matter rest at that. And then, she sued him, ie, not because of what he allegedly did before but because he wasn’t willing to throw more money in her direction.
NB: That’s an attempt to the tell the side of the story the Mail left out based on the facts and some not entirely unlikely conjectures. As I don’t know any of the people, I do not claim that it must be true, just that it could.
Indeed, the clickbait title of this article is extremely misleading.
Sexual harassment like racial discrimination cases have no upper limit on compensation.
I agree the guy is clearly a slime ball and he should have apologised to her once he saw and heard the CCTV, and that would have been that. But no: he was exploiting the very good law which avoids having the judicial system tied up with petty disagreements between employee and employer in the probationary period, during which either side can walk away without having to give any reason or notice. He could have his way with her (or so he thought) then just say she wasn’t very good at her job and that’s that, he would be off scott-free. I am sure he’s tried it (and maybe had it) many times. It’s a kind of justice that this lady frustrated his efforts in the future… I hope.
And I hope Ms Almussawi invests her damages wisely.
I also hope that her win will not make potential employers see her as too big a risk as “a litigious little so and so” and exclude her on that basis alone.
BUT, and it’s a big BUT:
People really need to learn that sticks and stones…. etc. For a woman, this should be to learn how to dismiss cackhanded/sleazy advances. Most guys get it and walk off, tail between their legs.
She was not raped. Not even close. She seemed to deal with him well enough, and although I am not dismissing how stressful it is for many young women who have never had to deal with a lecherous bloke, she should have just left and avoided all the stress of the tribunal. Those waitressing jobs are two a penny.
But like I say, I hope she invests the money wisely. And that he realises what a sleazy twat he probably is.
And it’s probably too late to hope that this won’t open the floodgates to a load of vexatious and horrible accusations by manipulative “victims”, of either sex…
This.
Yes, thank you for pointing out such an important nuance here. Context matters, and they guy was clearly being a creep.
History Debunked: Why are so many older white men angry!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=585JGCCMZBo
Jenna Almussawi? Wejdi Moussa? I bet their ancestors were not at Bannockburn or Culloden.
Maybe if their ancestors had been at Culloden, Jenna and Wejdi wouldn’t have come into existence at all…
Were your ancestors at Stamford Bridge? Or Crecy?
Come on this dude’s obviously Welsh.
What a winker.
Just change one vowel in “winker”, lol.
its a joke. And explaining why a joke is a joke is never funny.
I suspect most DS readers understood without having it telegraphed to them.
It’s a relief to find the comments align with my views on this story. The tribunal found its way to the right answer in my opinion. Mr Moussa sounds like the kind of dangerous bully that the anti-harrassment laws should be keeping in check.
Very true
My wife’s former employer once said to her on the way back from the Bank “Do you fancy a white sheet job?”. She didn’t know what one was, when he told her she laughed and brushed it off. He always wanted a bit of the extra with her. No big deal, he never got it. I wonder how much she could have claimed?
We were talking about wolf whistles and so on the other night as it happens. She used to get the builders at the company whistle her and suggestive comments. It ended when she got older. She was quite flattered when younger and never took it seriously.
Women can be far worse than men. When I was an apprentice the women used to grab and twist everything they could when you were going up a ladder. I found it funny, some guys found it distressing and actually frightening; 50 women in a small section is intimidating.
Where is the line between acceptable and abuse? Today it seems nothing is acceptable from a bloke but a woman, ever seen a gaggle of them on a night out or at a strip show? They are worse than any bunch of guys I ever knew.
Perhaps the difference is in intent? The White Sheet Job was semi-serious (its a quicky in a Hotel), the women grabbing my balls was jokey in intent. This guy, well, he seemed to use it as a weapon and that is very different.
It’s not only women. As far as I can tell, everything is acceptable provided the person who did it wasn’t a heterosexual man, because that’s the only ‘serious’ case, all others are “just fun”. But as someone who has been a target of this from both men and women (men much more frequently, obviously) I can’t help asking “Whose fun?”
The entire concept of sexual harassment has well and truly jumped the shark now.
That said, if you read the FULL story, the guy really was overstepping his bounds, being a creep and in the wrong in this particular case. There is, after all, a little detail called CONTEXT.