The Struggling Fad Shouldn’t Wander the Tory Party’s Base

It is true that Sunak, educated at Winchester, Oxford and Stanford, and married to a wealthy Indian heiress, tries hard to show off his general touch, for example, a hoodie over a shirt and tie. His image was not helped by revelations that his wife had not paid UK tax on her international income and that she herself held a US Green Card while in Downing Street. They have made political mistakes, including bragging about diverting government money from poor urban areas.

Still, the eccentric’s flaws fade in comparison to the truss. Short on audacious rhetoric and intellectual pride, Britain’s potential next prime minister is seen as the English-accented Sarah Palin. As foreign secretary, he did not realize that the Baltic and the Black Sea were two separate bodies of water. His offer of support to Britain, who wanted to go to war in Ukraine, was swiftly withdrawn by his own government. His most plausible claim so far seems to be, “I want to surf the zeitgeist where all this is happening.” Accordingly, she sided with Tori Remainers when they were in power, then took her surfboards to the Brexiteers. The latter won the referendum in 2016.

As a re-born Brexiteer, the truce is now threatening to break large parts of the Brexit agreement with the EU, at the risk of provoking a trade war. His personal attacks on Scottish leader Nicola Sturgeon may only spur Scottish steps toward an independence referendum and Britain’s much-anticipated breakup.

Johnson’s former chief adviser Dominic Cummings claims the truce was “closer to firecrackers than anyone I’ve met in Parliament.” Either way, Sunak is the best candidate, as recognized by the nobles of his own party. In public debates, he has increasingly dismantled the truce’s inconsistent economic plan. In the eyes of the Tory faithful, however, the craze seems almost too rational and non-Caucasian.

Xenophobia entered the political mainstream in England long ago. Sadiq Khan, the first Muslim mayor of London, had to overcome allegations from Tory leaders that he would support terrorists. Tory Grassroots is even more familiar with Britain’s right-wing media. It would be surprising if crude bias did not at least partly determine their political choices.

Sunak’s supporters told the Times of London last month that his candidate was the victim of “little covert racism” from party members. One was said to have said, “I’m not ready to go gray yet.” Sunak himself joked about being praised for his “great tan” on the campaign trail. The light-hearted comment hides a very strange reality for the craze. Like many socially and economically successful children of immigrants, he has chosen to align himself with a party that protects the interests of the rich and powerful. Yet he may be unaware of its contribution to racism. He admitted in a 2020 interview that racist abuse “stings in a way that happens in very few things.”

Lagging behind an unqualified candidate, he could appeal to a more liberal-minded Tory by outlining his modest origins as the hardworking son of the Indian diaspora; He could have emphasized that Britain is an irrevocably pluralistic society. Expanding the political and moral horizons of its voters will hardly ensure their victory, but it will ease the struggle for racial equality and the dignity of other British people of color.

Instead, Sunak has begun attacking the straw men of “left-wing agitators,” who are apparently bulldozing “our history, our traditions and our fundamental values.” Last week, he proposed radically expanding the definition of Islamic terrorism and focused on “rooting out those who hate our country”.

There is something both pitiful and sad about his new-found enthusiasm for the culture wars. Sunak is in a party whose members prefer fantasists as leaders. Yet by catering to the lowest common denominator of British politics, he is making it more difficult for people like him, let alone rising to the top.

Pankaj Mishra is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist.

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