Britain’s long-running argument over who gets to call themselves British has been thrust back into the spotlight by former prime minister Rishi Sunak, who has warned against allowing skin colour to become a proxy for nationality.
Writing in his regular Sunday Times column after delivering the Marylebone Cricket Club’s Cowdrey Lecture at Lord’s, Sunak reflected on his own experience as a British-born Hindu of Indian heritage and on what he sees as an increasingly uncomfortable question in modern Britain: can someone be fully English if they are not white?
For Sunak, the answer is unequivocal.
“I worry that Britain’s great democratic achievement is coming under strain,” he wrote, pointing to several challenges facing the country, including Islamist extremism, reactions to the October 7 attacks in Israel and the government’s failure in recent years to adequately control immigration.
But alongside those debates, he identified what he described as another, more subtle danger: “a risk that we start equating skin colour with nationality”.
He warned against creating “different classes of Briton”, in which people who arrived in Britain more recently, or whose parents and grandparents did, are viewed as permanently less British than those whose families have lived in the country for generations.
From the ‘Tebbit Test’ to a ‘reverse Tebbit test’
His argument is rooted partly in his own childhood. Sunak revisited the controversial “Tebbit Test”, a phrase coined by Conservative politician Norman Tebbit in 1990. Tebbit argued that the cricket team a migrant supported could be viewed as an indication of their willingness to integrate into British society.
For Sunak, however, the test represented something that, at least in theory, could be passed by anyone. “If you supported England because you now saw it as home, you were part of the team regardless of the colour of your skin,” he wrote.
He recalled being a ten-year-old boy growing up in Southampton and instinctively supporting England, Hampshire and Southampton Football Club. “Ten-year-old me passed the test without even knowing about it,” he wrote.
But Sunak argued that Britain has since developed what he calls a “reverse Tebbit test”, one that cannot be passed by non-white Britons, regardless of their loyalty, birthplace, upbringing or contribution to society. “In this world, if you’re not white it doesn’t matter who you support at the cricket: you can never be English,” he wrote. “This reverse Tebbit test is impossible for any non-white person to pass.”
A landmark moment in Downing Street
The intervention carries particular weight because Sunak himself became a symbol of how dramatically Britain’s understanding of identity had changed when he entered Downing Street in October 2022 as the country’s first prime minister of Indian heritage.
His appointment was hailed by many as evidence of Britain’s multicultural transformation. His grandparents had migrated from British India to East Africa before his family eventually settled in Britain, and Sunak has frequently spoken about what his rise meant to his family and wider British Asian community.
Sunak recalled that during his premiership he was able to participate publicly in both Christian and Hindu traditions without those aspects of his identity becoming a political controversy. He could appoint Church of England bishops, read a lesson at the King’s coronation and, in Downing Street, light Diwali diyas with his daughters.
“Neither my race nor my religion was among” the criticisms directed at him as prime minister, he noted. Yet he also lamented comments questioning whether he could truly be English while being a “brown Hindu”.
For Sunak, such arguments risk turning British identity into something inherited rather than something lived. He warned against a society in which people who “feel British, who embrace our culture and embody our values” are nevertheless marked down because they or their families arrived more recently.
His intervention comes as debates over immigration, integration and multiculturalism continue to occupy a central place in British political discourse.
‘Of course, I’m English’
This is not the first time that the former Prime Minister ahas spoken about identity and race rhetorics. He has previously expressed concern that Britain could “slip back” towards more overt forms of racism.
Speaking to Nick Robinson on Political Thinking in 2025, Sunak was similarly direct when discussing his own nationality and identity. “Of course, I’m English. I was born here and brought up here,” he said.
He also reflected on the significance of becoming prime minister for his family, recalling his grandfather’s emotional reaction to seeing his grandson enter Westminster. His grandfather, Sunak recalled, tearfully telephoned a friend in India during Sunak’s first visit to Parliament.
For Sunak, the story represented something larger than personal achievement. “It meant an enormous amount to people”, he said in the interview, describing Britain as a country where his grandparents could arrive with little, work hard and integrate, and where, two generations later, their grandson could enter Downing Street.
His Hindu faith has also remained an important part of the way Sunak describes his identity. He has described Hinduism as a way of life as much as a religion, highlighting the concept of Dharma and the importance of duty. The Bhagavad Gita, he has said, shaped his understanding of responsibility and detachment, helping explain why he chose to take his parliamentary oath on the Hindu scripture.
Identity is rarely either-or
His story, however, is not unique.
Across Britain, generations of British Asians have grown up navigating identities that are not mutually exclusive. For many, being British does not require abandoning an Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Sri Lankan or other heritage. Their Britishness can exist alongside their languages, religions, family histories, food, traditions and cultural memories.
Cllr Abhishek Sachdev had previously told Asian Voice that his British Asian identity and his British identity were inseparable. “Being a British Asian is an integral part of my identity, but I was born here—I consider myself just as British as anyone else,” he said.
Sachdev, whose parents came to Britain from East Africa in the 1970s, described the country as having provided his family with opportunities that ultimately enabled the next generation to flourish. “For me, there’s no conflict—being British and being a British Asian are one and the same in my daily life,” he said.
But the experience of belonging is not universally felt.
Jabeer Butt OBE, chief executive of the Race Equality Foundation, formerly pointed to the racist disorder of August 2024 as evidence that some ethnic minority communities continue to face questions over whether they belong in Britain. “The racist riots of August 2024 demonstrated that, for some, Black, Asian and minoritised ethnic people do not belong in Britain,” he said.
Butt argued that anti-Muslim hatred and racism had been central to disinformation surrounding the violence, warning that demonising communities could contribute to future incidents. “We need everyone to clearly state that people of Black, Asian and minoritized backgrounds belong in Britain,” he said.
Sunak believes sport can offer a small but meaningful answer to the divisions surrounding identity. Cricket, he argues, has a unique role because it is played and followed by people from almost every major ethnic community in Britain. As prime minister, he said, he had sought to expand opportunities for children across England to play the game.
Sunak has offered his own answer to the question of belonging: British identity, he argues, should not be determined by the colour of a person’s skin or the date their family arrived.
His final warning is stark.
“We cannot allow race to be reintroduced into our politics,” he wrote. “We cannot allow Briton to be set against Briton.”
‘Truly British’ identity rooted in race is a myth, says academic
Dr Bindi Shah, Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology, Social Policy & Criminology and a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, said the current immigration debate was closely linked to questions of race, culture and belonging.
“The current debate about immigration is absolutely a debate about race, culture and who is perceived to ‘belong’ in Britain. It is about the symbolic boundaries of Britain as a nation, which are constructed by some politicians, the media and ordinary Britons as racialised in terms of ‘whiteness’, based on myths of a historically singular white majority culture and common descent.
“Within this construction, white Britons are seen as the original people of Britain and therefore as the only ones who can claim to be ‘truly British’. But we must remember Cheddar Man, who lived in Britain more than 10,000 years ago. DNA evidence suggests that Cheddar Man’s ancestors may have originated in Africa.”
On the impact of increasingly heated immigration rhetoric on British-born people from migrant backgrounds, Shah said: “This heated immigration rhetoric, and the construction of the symbolic boundaries of Britain in racial terms, serves to exclude British-born people from migrant backgrounds. They are seen as cultural ‘others’, as uncivilised or as a threat to liberal British values.”
She said a more inclusive understanding of Britishness required Britain to acknowledge its complex history.
“A more inclusive understanding of Britishness can only be forged if we remember Britain’s racial, imperial and migration histories. In 2026, having a sense of belonging to Britain cannot be based on a racial understanding of Britain, but on civic values such as fairness, tolerance, compassion, human rights and social justice that promote social solidarity and social cohesion.”
