TRIGGERnometry - September 27, 2026


My Response to Rishi Sunak - Konstantin Kisin

Hosted by
Francis Foster Konstantin Kisin
Guests
Konstantin Kisin
Mentioned
Rishi Sunak Fraser Nelson Catherine Burblesing Victoria Sovereigns Suella Braverman Michael Buble B. Sunak Tiza
The IVF Pioneer Who Says His Own Industry Is Lying - Professor Robert Winston ＂They Never Wanted To Stop The Boats＂ Suella Braverman

Episode Stats


Length

15 minutes

Words per minute

177.26

Word count

2,685

Sentence count

124

Harmful content

Toxicity

5

sentences flagged

Hate speech

13

sentences flagged


Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00 From morning hockey with a cup of coffee to Timbits and road trips,
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00:00:16 Visit timhortons.ca slash triangle for details.
00:00:19 My response to Rishi Sunak.
00:00:22 former prime minister rishi sunak has written a piece in the sunday times about identity
00:00:30 integration and me he doesn't say so explicitly but he doesn't need to instead he quotes me
00:00:36 without attribution less anger inducing but stranger still he writes was a debate that
00:00:42 kicked off after i left office about whether i was english or not the claim was that i couldn't be
00:00:47 because I was, quote, a brown Hindu.
00:00:50 That was me.
00:00:51 In February last year on Trigonometry,
00:00:53 Fraser Nelson raised Sunak unprompted
00:00:55 in a debate about identity
00:00:57 and told me that Sunak was as English
00:00:59 as Tiza and Yfront.
00:01:01 I made a nuanced counter-argument,
00:01:03 but in the ensuing crosstalk I said,
00:01:05 he's a brown Hindu, how is he English?
00:01:07 That was not the best articulation of an argument
00:01:10 which Nelson himself described
00:01:12 as a perfectly fair point in the aftermath.
00:01:15 What I meant to use was the phrase
00:01:16 that nobody objects to when the BBC uses it, British Asian,
00:01:20 and I reached for a shortcut that obscured the argument
00:01:23 rather than sharpening it.
00:01:24 That's on me, and I've said so before.
00:01:27 I typically don't go around issuing verdicts
00:01:29 on whether people are English.
00:01:31 I was answering a claim that had been put to me
00:01:33 about a man I've never met and bear no ill will towards
00:01:36 on a podcast where my job is to respond to what my guest says.
00:01:40 I'd have preferred the argument stay general
00:01:42 rather than focusing on Sunak.
00:01:44 He didn't, and he's had a year of being the case study, which I regret.
00:01:48 I texted him privately to say so.
00:01:51 No reply.
00:01:51 I don't know if the number I was given for him is no longer in use,
00:01:55 or he simply doesn't want to accept my apology.
00:01:58 If it's the latter, that is, of course, his right.
00:02:00 That's the concession.
00:02:02 Here's what I won't concede.
00:02:04 The charge that followed was not that I phrased it badly.
00:02:07 It was that my position was racist.
00:02:10 I have two children.
00:02:11 Both were born in England to British parents who each came here from somewhere else.
00:02:15 My children are not English either.
00:02:17 They're British.
00:02:18 I said this in the very same podcast Sunak pulls quotes from in his article.
00:02:23 My kids also happen to be whiter than a Michael Buble Christmas album. 0.57
00:02:26 So either I'm racist against my own white children, 0.57
00:02:30 or maybe this isn't an argument about race.
00:02:32 Suela Braverman, Sunak's own former Home Secretary,
00:02:35 responded to the row about my comments by penning an article
00:02:39 in which she argued that as a proud British Asian, she herself is not English.
00:02:44 Is she racist against herself?
00:02:46 Or is there perhaps a more substantive discussion being had than people would like to pretend?
00:02:51 It's 2026, of course, so to many people everything is about race. 0.99
00:02:55 But instead of having the stupid version of this debate, 0.98
00:02:58 let's take Sunak's argument and address it on its merits. 0.98
00:03:01 Let's accept that anyone can be English.
00:03:03 All there is required is to be born in England and to say you're English.
00:03:08 Feels good, doesn't it?
00:03:09 If you're an ethnic minority like Sunak or an immigrant like me,
00:03:13 just saying this coats you in a comforting protection of fitting in,
00:03:17 being safe, living in the land of beautiful diversity. 0.76
00:03:21 And if you're a white bread who says this, 0.96
00:03:23 what a relief to know that you're definitely not a nasty racist. 0.97
00:03:27 To his credit, despite repeatedly and deliberately conflating Englishness
00:03:32 with Britishness at his convenience, Sunak is an intelligent man
00:03:35 who can't pretend he doesn't actually understand the argument I'm making.
00:03:40 Some people, he says, will argue that English is an ethnic identity
00:03:43 and British is a civic identity.
00:03:46 Though if you think those nuances are heard by most people,
00:03:49 I fear you are being rather, and perhaps even willfully, naive, he says.
00:03:54 If you are born and brought up in England and view it as home,
00:03:57 what are you other than English?
00:03:59 Attempting to deny people their Englishness or Britishness
00:04:02 because of the color of their skin is a recipe for alienation and for a two-tier society.
00:04:08 How are children who hear this meant to feel?
00:04:11 If I was at any point naive about people's ability to hear the nuance of this debate,
00:04:15 I've certainly been disabused of my delusions by the backlash to my comments.
00:04:20 The problem for SUNAC, however, and more importantly for our country,
00:04:24 is that just because a lot of people are too busy, too scared, or too uninterested to understand the problem
00:04:29 does not mean the problem will magically disappear.
00:04:32 Would Sunak argue that the majority of the British public are currently willing to hear
00:04:36 the nuances of the national debt, which is greater than our GDP, or that raising taxes
00:04:41 will not deliver prosperity for the very people that measure is alleged to help?
00:04:45 I doubt it.
00:04:46 That many are unable to pass the complexities of a particular issue does not render that
00:04:52 issue irrelevant.
00:04:53 What Sunak actually wants is for us to accept that this debate is pointless, not because
00:04:58 it doesn't matter, but because he's right.
00:05:01 As he says in the opening of his article,
00:05:03 in Britain we've created the most successful multi-faith, multi-ethnic democracy.
00:05:08 Job done, case closed.
00:05:10 Unfortunately for all of us, the reason we're having this debate
00:05:13 is that to a large and growing number of people in Britain,
00:05:17 this multicultural experiment doesn't feel all that successful.
00:05:21 Indeed, the failure of this approach has become so undeniable
00:05:24 that we've given up cancelling people who make this observation.
00:05:27 In her brilliant upcoming book, Diversity is Not Our Strength, Catherine Burblesingh, an inner-city teacher and founder of the Michaela School, whose life's work has been to inculcate a largely ethnic minority intake of students into uniting around their British identity, chronicles the rising self-segregation among children across schools which fail to do this.
00:05:48 The inner city scene I've described, she says, in the long run is more divisive than is understood.
00:05:54 I've seen it all before. The Bengali kids sit together. The Pakistani kids sit on the other 1.00
00:05:59 side of the hall. The Hindu Indian kids sit together. The Black African kids sit together,
00:06:05 sometimes divided on the basis of whether they're Christian or Muslim. The Eastern European kids
00:06:10 have their area outside by a set group of benches. At other moments, friendships across divides will
00:06:15 be formed. But there's a catch. They will be bound together by the idea that they all experience
00:06:20 marginalization or are all from somewhere else. Last year, a 12-year-old girl turned up for
00:06:27 Culture Celebration Day, prepared to give a short speech about her culture, just like all the other
00:06:32 pupils. The event was dedicated to, quote, recognizing and celebrating the rich cultural
00:06:37 diversity within our school community. We encourage students to consider wearing attire
00:06:42 that reflects their nationality or family heritage, the school said.
00:06:47 Unfortunately for the girl in question,
00:06:49 the culture she wanted to talk about was British,
00:06:51 and the flag on her dress was the Union Jack.
00:06:54 As will surprise no one who's been paying attention,
00:06:57 far from being included in her school's delightful celebrations,
00:07:00 she was prevented from speaking and sent home.
00:07:03 Diversity, it turns out, is not for everyone.
00:07:06 Some groups are more equal than others.
00:07:08 This phenomenon in Britain's schools is replicating across society at large,
00:07:13 where the endless celebrations of diversity,
00:07:16 combined with outright hostility towards English and increasingly British identity,
00:07:20 history and culture, are creating an equal and opposite reaction.
00:07:25 For many years now, a small number of sensible people have warned
00:07:29 that identity politics for minorities would inevitably lead to identity politics for the majority.
00:07:35 If you spend 20 years telling people that what matters about them is not what unites them,
00:07:40 allegiance and affinity to the country in which they all live,
00:07:43 but what makes them different, their ethnicity,
00:07:45 then inevitably everyone will want a piece of the action.
00:07:49 That's just human nature.
00:07:51 Add to this the unprecedented demographic change that has occurred in this country in recent decades,
00:07:57 whereby Britain went from being a white British country
00:08:00 with a small number of well-integrated ethnic minority residents
00:08:03 to white British people now being a minority in several of its major cities, including its capital.
00:08:10 Why would we be surprised that there is now a debate about identity?
00:08:15 Words are by their very nature exclusive rather than inclusive.
00:08:19 To describe something as a table is to necessarily claim that it is not a chair.
00:08:23 That does not mean that all tables are identical,
00:08:26 that a random member of the public can reliably explain what makes a table a table,
00:08:30 or even that you cannot eat off a chair the way you might eat off a table
00:08:35 or sit on a table the way you might sit on a chair.
00:08:38 But we all accept that there's a difference between tables and chairs.
00:08:42 To say that something is A is to simultaneously make the claim that it is not B.
00:08:47 Sunak's argument is that we should reject the idea
00:08:49 that there's anything exclusive about the English identity.
00:08:53 Anyone can be English if they feel that they are and were born here.
00:08:57 Erling Haaland, born in Leeds, would become English tomorrow,
00:09:00 simply by saying that he feels English.
00:09:03 Given England's performance against Argentina,
00:09:05 many would be forgiven for hoping that he does.
00:09:07 But those who adapt this instrumental view of identity like Sunak
00:09:11 do not seem to realize that they are playing directly into the hands
00:09:15 of the ethno-nationalist right.
00:09:17 And when he says that attempting to deny people their Englishness
00:09:20 is a recipe for alienation, for a two-tier society,
00:09:24 does he imagine that denying people belonging to a unique and special group
00:09:28 only has a negative effect on ethnic minorities?
00:09:31 Does he really think that saying to ethnically English people
00:09:34 that they are the only people in human history
00:09:37 who are not allowed to have their own ethnic identity
00:09:40 will not make them feel like they live in a two-tier society?
00:09:44 Like Sunak, I do not have any great desire to engage in these debates.
00:09:49 I would very much like to return to the Britain to which I came in 1995,
00:09:54 one in which foreigners like me were welcomed as guests
00:09:57 and manageable numbers encouraged to integrate and become British and these debates were not had
00:10:02 because they were not necessary. But 30 years of uncontrolled mass immigration, the frankly
00:10:08 outrageous opening of our borders to hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants with no legitimate 1.00
00:10:13 claim to be here and the pernicious ideology of diversity and inclusion being rammed down the 1.00
00:10:18 British people's throats have put an end to that. I'm aware that carefully crafted polling will show
00:10:24 that a significant proportion of people in Britain disagree with me.
00:10:28 If asked whether a well-known and well-liked British citizen
00:10:31 of minority ethnic origin is English,
00:10:34 many will say that he is.
00:10:36 But I wonder how many people would agree
00:10:38 that in England populated exclusively by people
00:10:41 whose parents were born abroad,
00:10:43 no matter how integrated,
00:10:44 is England as they think of it. 1.00
00:10:47 This entire thing is a trap
00:10:48 that is destined to lead Britain down the path
00:10:51 to segregation, tribalism and civil strife. 1.00
00:10:54 There's only one way out because there's only one type of a successful multi-ethnic society. 0.99
00:11:00 Those societies are called empires. 0.99
00:11:02 How do empires work? 0.98
00:11:04 A single ethnic group expands the borders of its country so that it encompasses other ethnic groups. 0.93
00:11:09 The original ethnic group, Romans in the Roman Empire, Russians in the Russian Empire, Ottomans in the Ottoman Empire,
00:11:16 remains a distinct ethnic group but a civic identity is created to incorporate the other ethnicities who make up the society.
00:11:24 as such you could be a roman citizen who was not a roman a russian citizen who is not ethnically
00:11:30 russian we actually have two different words for this in russian ruski which means an ethnic russian
00:11:35 and russianian a russian national for example no one in russia would describe russian ufc champion
00:11:41 khabib normagomedov as an ethnic russian he's dagestani but everyone would agree he is a russian
00:11:47 citizen and celebrate his achievements on behalf of his country with the ethnically russian president
00:11:52 calling him to congratulate him on his victories the solution to britain's conundrum is no different
00:11:58 first the english scottish welsh and northern irish identity must be allowed to exist as
00:12:03 ethnic identities second they must be allowed to take the rightful place and be celebrated
00:12:08 as the founding ethnic groups of britain to which others have been added far from being denigrated
00:12:14 denied and diluted as they are today they must be acknowledged and recognized they must in other
00:12:19 words be included and considered part of the beautiful diversity of britain then we must do
00:12:26 everything in our power to focus on what unites us as citizens who love their country and wanted
00:12:31 to thrive and succeed we must focus in other words on our britishness what is that exactly 0.99
00:12:37 what is it that we can all get behind hating the french of course but alas that's not going to be
00:12:44 enough the erudite and well-traveled american journalist richard minater once told me a story
00:12:50 about traveling in africa i remember spending the night in a mud hut in northern uganda with
00:12:55 some local tribesmen in the late 1990s he told me one of the older guys surprised me as we were
00:13:01 falling asleep and talking in front of a smoky fire he asked if the british would ever return
00:13:06 to uganda i was astonished by the question richard said why would you want them he asked the answer
00:13:13 was long and discursive but basically boiled down to this they have no tribes they're fair they
00:13:20 invented the modern world you can win fights in their courts against them and they will patiently
00:13:25 and calmly teach you anything that you want to know about their society the fact that a tribesman
00:13:31 in uganda can articulate these elusive british values better than most people in britain including
00:13:36 its leaders is a large part of the reason we are where we are the way out will not be easy but it
00:13:43 it begins with acknowledging the problems we face and acting accordingly.
00:13:47 If you enjoy these videos, remember that they're available on my sub stack as articles
00:13:51 at www.constantinkission.com days, weeks, and sometimes months ahead of time.
00:13:58 So head on over to www.constantinkission.com right now and subscribe.
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