British politics is currently in a very interesting phase. It has been long since the nail-biting Brexit debate that things have got on an edge in Britain. It started with the resignation of Boris Johnson as the country’s Prime Minister after a slew of resignations by the members of his cabinet. The ministers including Rishi Sunak and Sajid David claimed that they have lost trust in the government over Johnson’s handling of the Chris Pincher scandal.
Open rebellion by his own ministers led him to quit the top post with prime ministership again on offer even as the general elections are just 18 months away.
Rishi Sunak has emerged as a top performer in the internal polling of Conservative Party MPs in the five rounds held so far. Now the race is down to just two candidates — Sunak and his rival Liz Truss. Now these final two candidates will have to face the larger party base of around 1,60,000 voters. While Sunak has remained to be MPs’ favourite, it is difficult to predict that he will get the same love from his party members.
In a campaign video that he has released, Sunak has mentioned his pro-Brexit credentials and vow to act on grooming gangs but this may not be enough. He is fast losing momentum in the race as Johnson-sympathisers are already campaigning against him. Sunak meanwhile is leaving no stone unturned as allegations of his team transferring votes to Liz Truss are rife because in the final face-off of two, she will prove to be a weaker candidate than Penny Mordaunt.
While events in Britain are taking an interesting turn and we must watch out for them in India, our interest must be strictly limited to a leadership change in the fifth largest economy of the world. One which we will take over fast and become the fifth largest economy ourselves by 2024. But instead of this, Indian TV channels, YouTube podcasts and multiple social media influencers are going gaga over the prospects of a person of Indian-origin becoming Prime Minister of Britain for the first time.
This might sound exciting to a country that was once ruled by Britishers that an Indian-origin person will rule our former colonisers, but it really is a futile excitement keeping the real interests of India in view. First, Rishi Sunak is not even a first generation migrant. His paternal-grandfather moved to Kenya from an undivided India in 1935 while his father was born a Kenyan citizen who married his mother, Usha Sunak born in present-day Tanzania.
Sunak definitely has another Indian connection. He is married to Indian tech billionaire NR Narayana Murthy’s daughter, Akshata. But all this hardly makes him remotely Indian except his ethnicity, the colour of his skin and a name and a surname that sounds Indian. In fact, he has been the one who has played down his Indian connection consistently because of his political compulsion to be seen very much as a British by his constituents. The non-domicile status and Indian citizenship of his wife, Akshata, has anyway caused a furore in his constituency, Richmond (Yorks), in the past.
Plus, Indian-origin people occupying top political offices in foreign countries is hardly a novelty. Kamala Harris was elected as Vice President of the most powerful country in the world in 2020; she boasts of an Indian mother and an Afro-Jamaican father. There have been at least 10 heads of states of Indian origin so far, including the current Portuguese Prime Minister Antonio Costa.
Instead of cheer-leading Rishi Sunak for his Indian origin, we will be better placed in looking out for Indian interests in the British political race and which candidate will be closest to fulfil it. After Brexit, India and the UK are negotiating a free trade agreement whose fourth round concluded just last month and the fate of which will depend on the new prime minister. The UK’s share in India’s global trade has been on a downward trajectory since 2000. So far, India has got the UK to remove duties on textiles and rice. Non-tariff measures (NTMs) on Indian products have proved to be a barrier for Indian businesses to access the UK market.
All of this needs to be factored in by the FTA which will conclude by Diwali. Here India needs a Prime Minister who believes in Indian interests and the Indian growth story, and not a person of Indian origin per se whose priority till now has been to play down his Indian roots.
The author is a PhD in International Relations from the Department of International Relations, South Asian University. Views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not represent the stand of this publication.
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