Tuesday 4 April 2023

Stoking the tensions

 

As most people from Wales or Scotland will understand, most of the rest of the world appears not to understand the difference between England and Britain. For all the difference in accent when people speak, we sound much the same as each other to a non-British ear. And there are no visible differences either – red hair may be marginally more prevalent in Ireland, but it isn’t uniquely so, and it’s not much of an indicator. Something similar happens in other areas of the world as well – or even within migrant communities. Whilst the difference between an Indian and a Pakistani or, say, someone of Indian ethnicity with a Mauritian/Kenyan background, will be clear and obvious to all of them, it’s a lot less so to many less familiar with the differences, and again is not obviously visible. Many of those stigmatised with the label ‘Paki’ over the years have no connection whatsoever with Pakistan; those doing the labelling simply don’t understand that.

That makes it highly dangerous for any politician in the UK to start labelling one particular group of people of Asian origin as being responsible for one particular type of crime. It would be dangerous even if it were true, but the evidence suggests that it doesn’t even pass that test. It’s a line which does, though, pander to a particular sector of the electorate, and it’s a sector which is unlikely to distinguish (and is probably incapable of doing so) between Pakistanis and Asians more generally. And to the extent that anything the Tories do or say these days can surprise me, I am surprised that Suella Braverman, given her own background, does not understand that. There seems to be a belief of some sort that there is nothing racist about a person of Asian origin stirring up hatred against other people of an Asian origin, but that’s not the way it’s likely to play out. It should go without saying that police will tackle grooming gangs, with no distinction as to their colour or race (although recent reports suggest that police are more, rather than less, likely to tackle non-Caucasian crime in at least some parts of the UK), and if some forces have ‘difficulty’ in doing that, it needs to be addressed. But using the sort of words which Braverman used yesterday is likely to make their task harder rather than easier, to say nothing of encouraging racist political groups. In her attempt to woo a particular sector of the electorate, she really has gone too far, and for all his cautious distancing from the detail of what she said, his failure to sack her means that Sunak is as bad. Who would have thought, just a few years ago, that having senior ministers from an Asian background would stoke rather than lessen racial tensions?

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