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

Episode Stats


Length

15 minutes

Words per minute

177.26

Word count

2,685

Sentence count

119


Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
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00:00:19.980 My response to Rishi Sunak.
00:00:22.020 former prime minister rishi sunak has written a piece in the sunday times about identity
00:00:30.880 integration and me he doesn't say so explicitly but he doesn't need to instead he quotes me
00:00:36.980 without attribution less anger inducing but stranger still he writes was a debate that
00:00:42.600 kicked off after i left office about whether i was english or not the claim was that i couldn't be
00:00:47.720 because I was, quote, a brown Hindu.
00:00:50.780 That was me.
00:00:51.860 In February last year on Trigonometry,
00:00:53.760 Fraser Nelson raised Sunak unprompted
00:00:55.820 in a debate about identity
00:00:57.400 and told me that Sunak was as English
00:00:59.580 as Tiza and Yfront.
00:01:01.300 I made a nuanced counter-argument,
00:01:03.280 but in the ensuing crosstalk I said,
00:01:05.320 he's a brown Hindu, how is he English?
00:01:07.820 That was not the best articulation of an argument
00:01:10.320 which Nelson himself described
00:01:12.020 as a perfectly fair point in the aftermath.
00:01:15.120 What I meant to use was the phrase
00:01:16.640 that nobody objects to when the BBC uses it, British Asian,
00:01:20.940 and I reached for a shortcut that obscured the argument
00:01:23.340 rather than sharpening it.
00:01:24.700 That's on me, and I've said so before.
00:01:27.000 I typically don't go around issuing verdicts
00:01:29.620 on whether people are English.
00:01:31.260 I was answering a claim that had been put to me
00:01:33.460 about a man I've never met and bear no ill will towards
00:01:36.600 on a podcast where my job is to respond to what my guest says.
00:01:40.560 I'd have preferred the argument stay general
00:01:42.540 rather than focusing on Sunak.
00:01:44.580 He didn't, and he's had a year of being the case study, which I regret.
00:01:48.540 I texted him privately to say so.
00:01:51.000 No reply.
00:01:51.900 I don't know if the number I was given for him is no longer in use,
00:01:55.300 or he simply doesn't want to accept my apology.
00:01:58.100 If it's the latter, that is, of course, his right.
00:02:00.900 That's the concession.
00:02:02.480 Here's what I won't concede.
00:02:04.620 The charge that followed was not that I phrased it badly.
00:02:07.300 It was that my position was racist.
00:02:10.320 I have two children.
00:02:11.060 Both were born in England to British parents who each came here from somewhere else.
00:02:15.480 My children are not English either.
00:02:17.820 They're British.
00:02:18.820 I said this in the very same podcast Sunak pulls quotes from in his article.
00:02:23.200 My kids also happen to be whiter than a Michael Buble Christmas album.
00:02:26.980 So either I'm racist against my own white children,
00:02:30.160 or maybe this isn't an argument about race.
00:02:32.920 Suela Braverman, Sunak's own former Home Secretary,
00:02:35.900 responded to the row about my comments by penning an article
00:02:39.180 in which she argued that as a proud British Asian, she herself is not English.
00:02:44.120 Is she racist against herself?
00:02:46.440 Or is there perhaps a more substantive discussion being had than people would like to pretend?
00:02:51.080 It's 2026, of course, so to many people everything is about race.
00:02:55.500 But instead of having the stupid version of this debate,
00:02:58.220 let's take Sunak's argument and address it on its merits.
00:03:01.560 Let's accept that anyone can be English.
00:03:03.840 All there is required is to be born in England and to say you're English.
00:03:08.100 Feels good, doesn't it?
00:03:09.860 If you're an ethnic minority like Sunak or an immigrant like me,
00:03:13.320 just saying this coats you in a comforting protection of fitting in,
00:03:17.160 being safe, living in the land of beautiful diversity.
00:03:21.220 And if you're a white bread who says this,
00:03:23.340 what a relief to know that you're definitely not a nasty racist.
00:03:27.080 To his credit, despite repeatedly and deliberately conflating Englishness
00:03:32.060 with Britishness at his convenience, Sunak is an intelligent man
00:03:35.700 who can't pretend he doesn't actually understand the argument I'm making.
00:03:40.160 Some people, he says, will argue that English is an ethnic identity
00:03:43.720 and British is a civic identity.
00:03:46.580 Though if you think those nuances are heard by most people,
00:03:49.540 I fear you are being rather, and perhaps even willfully, naive, he says.
00:03:54.340 If you are born and brought up in England and view it as home,
00:03:57.680 what are you other than English?
00:03:59.880 Attempting to deny people their Englishness or Britishness
00:04:02.620 because of the color of their skin is a recipe for alienation and for a two-tier society.
00:04:08.440 How are children who hear this meant to feel?
00:04:11.320 If I was at any point naive about people's ability to hear the nuance of this debate,
00:04:15.680 I've certainly been disabused of my delusions by the backlash to my comments.
00:04:20.200 The problem for SUNAC, however, and more importantly for our country,
00:04:24.000 is that just because a lot of people are too busy, too scared, or too uninterested to understand the problem
00:04:29.080 does not mean the problem will magically disappear.
00:04:32.480 Would Sunak argue that the majority of the British public are currently willing to hear
00:04:36.540 the nuances of the national debt, which is greater than our GDP, or that raising taxes
00:04:41.880 will not deliver prosperity for the very people that measure is alleged to help?
00:04:45.940 I doubt it.
00:04:46.980 That many are unable to pass the complexities of a particular issue does not render that
00:04:52.160 issue irrelevant.
00:04:53.700 What Sunak actually wants is for us to accept that this debate is pointless, not because
00:04:58.340 it doesn't matter, but because he's right.
00:05:01.180 As he says in the opening of his article,
00:05:03.460 in Britain we've created the most successful multi-faith, multi-ethnic democracy.
00:05:08.260 Job done, case closed.
00:05:10.660 Unfortunately for all of us, the reason we're having this debate
00:05:13.940 is that to a large and growing number of people in Britain,
00:05:17.360 this multicultural experiment doesn't feel all that successful.
00:05:21.280 Indeed, the failure of this approach has become so undeniable
00:05:24.720 that we've given up cancelling people who make this observation.
00:05:27.760 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.
00:05:48.720 The inner city scene I've described, she says, in the long run is more divisive than is understood.
00:05:54.520 I've seen it all before. The Bengali kids sit together. The Pakistani kids sit on the other
00:05:59.840 side of the hall. The Hindu Indian kids sit together. The Black African kids sit together,
00:06:05.520 sometimes divided on the basis of whether they're Christian or Muslim. The Eastern European kids
00:06:10.100 have their area outside by a set group of benches. At other moments, friendships across divides will
00:06:15.480 be formed. But there's a catch. They will be bound together by the idea that they all experience
00:06:20.820 marginalization or are all from somewhere else. Last year, a 12-year-old girl turned up for
00:06:27.480 Culture Celebration Day, prepared to give a short speech about her culture, just like all the other
00:06:32.480 pupils. The event was dedicated to, quote, recognizing and celebrating the rich cultural
00:06:37.820 diversity within our school community. We encourage students to consider wearing attire
00:06:42.820 that reflects their nationality or family heritage, the school said.
00:06:47.020 Unfortunately for the girl in question,
00:06:49.120 the culture she wanted to talk about was British,
00:06:51.660 and the flag on her dress was the Union Jack.
00:06:54.420 As will surprise no one who's been paying attention,
00:06:57.220 far from being included in her school's delightful celebrations,
00:07:00.860 she was prevented from speaking and sent home.
00:07:03.740 Diversity, it turns out, is not for everyone.
00:07:06.400 Some groups are more equal than others.
00:07:08.240 This phenomenon in Britain's schools is replicating across society at large,
00:07:13.180 where the endless celebrations of diversity,
00:07:16.000 combined with outright hostility towards English and increasingly British identity,
00:07:20.800 history and culture, are creating an equal and opposite reaction.
00:07:25.680 For many years now, a small number of sensible people have warned
00:07:29.040 that identity politics for minorities would inevitably lead to identity politics for the majority.
00:07:35.060 If you spend 20 years telling people that what matters about them is not what unites them,
00:07:40.000 allegiance and affinity to the country in which they all live,
00:07:43.100 but what makes them different, their ethnicity,
00:07:45.740 then inevitably everyone will want a piece of the action.
00:07:49.220 That's just human nature.
00:07:51.180 Add to this the unprecedented demographic change that has occurred in this country in recent decades,
00:07:57.420 whereby Britain went from being a white British country
00:08:00.260 with a small number of well-integrated ethnic minority residents
00:08:03.940 to white British people now being a minority in several of its major cities, including its capital.
00:08:10.620 Why would we be surprised that there is now a debate about identity?
00:08:15.220 Words are by their very nature exclusive rather than inclusive.
00:08:19.220 To describe something as a table is to necessarily claim that it is not a chair.
00:08:23.740 That does not mean that all tables are identical,
00:08:26.760 that a random member of the public can reliably explain what makes a table a table,
00:08:30.840 or even that you cannot eat off a chair the way you might eat off a table
00:08:35.120 or sit on a table the way you might sit on a chair.
00:08:38.440 But we all accept that there's a difference between tables and chairs.
00:08:42.800 To say that something is A is to simultaneously make the claim that it is not B.
00:08:47.320 Sunak's argument is that we should reject the idea
00:08:49.780 that there's anything exclusive about the English identity.
00:08:53.580 Anyone can be English if they feel that they are and were born here.
00:08:57.520 Erling Haaland, born in Leeds, would become English tomorrow,
00:09:00.300 simply by saying that he feels English.
00:09:03.180 Given England's performance against Argentina,
00:09:05.320 many would be forgiven for hoping that he does.
00:09:07.880 But those who adapt this instrumental view of identity like Sunak
00:09:11.600 do not seem to realize that they are playing directly into the hands
00:09:15.480 of the ethno-nationalist right.
00:09:17.300 And when he says that attempting to deny people their Englishness
00:09:20.920 is a recipe for alienation, for a two-tier society,
00:09:24.560 does he imagine that denying people belonging to a unique and special group
00:09:28.500 only has a negative effect on ethnic minorities?
00:09:31.960 Does he really think that saying to ethnically English people
00:09:34.780 that they are the only people in human history
00:09:37.400 who are not allowed to have their own ethnic identity
00:09:40.500 will not make them feel like they live in a two-tier society?
00:09:44.620 Like Sunak, I do not have any great desire to engage in these debates.
00:09:49.980 I would very much like to return to the Britain to which I came in 1995,
00:09:54.800 one in which foreigners like me were welcomed as guests
00:09:57.560 and manageable numbers encouraged to integrate and become British and these debates were not had
00:10:02.920 because they were not necessary. But 30 years of uncontrolled mass immigration, the frankly
00:10:08.540 outrageous opening of our borders to hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants with no legitimate
00:10:13.220 claim to be here and the pernicious ideology of diversity and inclusion being rammed down the
00:10:18.920 British people's throats have put an end to that. I'm aware that carefully crafted polling will show
00:10:24.720 that a significant proportion of people in Britain disagree with me.
00:10:28.500 If asked whether a well-known and well-liked British citizen
00:10:31.860 of minority ethnic origin is English,
00:10:34.680 many will say that he is.
00:10:36.680 But I wonder how many people would agree
00:10:38.460 that in England populated exclusively by people
00:10:41.200 whose parents were born abroad,
00:10:43.180 no matter how integrated,
00:10:44.780 is England as they think of it.
00:10:47.180 This entire thing is a trap
00:10:48.720 that is destined to lead Britain down the path
00:10:51.220 to segregation, tribalism and civil strife.
00:10:54.720 There's only one way out because there's only one type of a successful multi-ethnic society.
00:11:00.200 Those societies are called empires.
00:11:02.720 How do empires work?
00:11:04.280 A single ethnic group expands the borders of its country so that it encompasses other ethnic groups.
00:11:09.380 The original ethnic group, Romans in the Roman Empire, Russians in the Russian Empire, Ottomans in the Ottoman Empire,
00:11:16.600 remains a distinct ethnic group but a civic identity is created to incorporate the other ethnicities who make up the society.
00:11:24.720 as such you could be a roman citizen who was not a roman a russian citizen who is not ethnically
00:11:30.160 russian we actually have two different words for this in russian ruski which means an ethnic russian
00:11:35.440 and russianian a russian national for example no one in russia would describe russian ufc champion
00:11:41.920 khabib normagomedov as an ethnic russian he's dagestani but everyone would agree he is a russian
00:11:47.520 citizen and celebrate his achievements on behalf of his country with the ethnically russian president
00:11:52.800 calling him to congratulate him on his victories the solution to britain's conundrum is no different
00:11:58.560 first the english scottish welsh and northern irish identity must be allowed to exist as
00:12:03.120 ethnic identities second they must be allowed to take the rightful place and be celebrated
00:12:08.560 as the founding ethnic groups of britain to which others have been added far from being denigrated
00:12:14.320 denied and diluted as they are today they must be acknowledged and recognized they must in other
00:12:19.920 words be included and considered part of the beautiful diversity of britain then we must do
00:12:26.560 everything in our power to focus on what unites us as citizens who love their country and wanted
00:12:31.040 to thrive and succeed we must focus in other words on our britishness what is that exactly
00:12:37.920 what is it that we can all get behind hating the french of course but alas that's not going to be
00:12:44.560 enough the erudite and well-traveled american journalist richard minater once told me a story
00:12:50.400 about traveling in africa i remember spending the night in a mud hut in northern uganda with
00:12:55.680 some local tribesmen in the late 1990s he told me one of the older guys surprised me as we were
00:13:01.440 falling asleep and talking in front of a smoky fire he asked if the british would ever return
00:13:06.720 to uganda i was astonished by the question richard said why would you want them he asked the answer
00:13:13.920 was long and discursive but basically boiled down to this they have no tribes they're fair they
00:13:20.240 invented the modern world you can win fights in their courts against them and they will patiently
00:13:25.600 and calmly teach you anything that you want to know about their society the fact that a tribesman
00:13:31.200 in uganda can articulate these elusive british values better than most people in britain including
00:13:36.800 its leaders is a large part of the reason we are where we are the way out will not be easy but it
00:13:43.280 it begins with acknowledging the problems we face and acting accordingly.
00:13:47.480 If you enjoy these videos, remember that they're available on my sub stack as articles
00:13:51.920 at www.constantinkission.com days, weeks, and sometimes months ahead of time.
00:13:58.080 So head on over to www.constantinkission.com right now and subscribe.
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