Comment by teh64
2 days ago
The man who says Rishi Sunak is not English [0] might be lying? Thats crazy.
[0] https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/society/2025/02/of-cou...
2 days ago
The man who says Rishi Sunak is not English [0] might be lying? Thats crazy.
[0] https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/society/2025/02/of-cou...
I guess it depends on what you mean by English. England is a country, but you can't have an English passport, you can only get a UK passport. so, English is a kinda-sorta a non-nationality, but it is very much an ethnic group.
I don't think anyone is claiming that Rishi Sunak isn't a UK citizen, but he certainly isn't a member of the English ethnic group, or any of the Celtic ethnic groups that also make up the UK's native population.
If we go by the explanation from wikipedia [0], Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage would not be considered English, as their families are not part of the English or Celtic ethnic groups. Their ancestors are Turkish and German who came to the UK after 1850. Do you believe they are not English? I mean even the current King of the UK would not be considered English by your definition! He is descended from Greek, Danish and German people [1].
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_people
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_monarchy_of_the...
I agree, they are not ethnically English, they are British citizens and have all the rights that come with citizenship, the same as every other UK citizen including those that would call themselves English. You think there's some kind of gotcha there, but there isn't.
England hasn't had an English king since 1066, that's not controversial, and even then the inbreeding between the European royal houses was creating a pan-european elite that made world world 1 more of a really bad family argument than anything else.
What's really odd is that Rishi Sunak is extremely proud of his ethnicity and heritage, it's unfortunate that we've made it almost impossible for other people's to have that same pride.
The usual meaning of English. Say, roughly the criteria that would make someone eligible to play for the England football team. Skin color has nothing to do with it, and I can assure you that very few English people either know or care whether they have any ‘Celtic’ ancestry.
No-one questions the Englishness of white men born in England to two non-English parents. People raising the absurd non-issue of Rishi Sunak’s Englishness are just concealing their rather obvious prejudices with a lot of bafflegab about ‘English ethnicity’ (a concept which not even they can really take at all seriously, if they at least have some acquaintance with English history).
There are Ethnic groups in England that have been present for several thousand years. Some people clearly mean this and can't articulate it better.
Rushi Sunak ancestry is obviously Indian. I don't really care about his ethnicity (he another politician in a suit to me), but I can understand what people mean when they say he isn't English without automatically assuming they are Racist.
Sports teams aren't a particularly good criteria, I could be Scottish or Welsh and play for England, it's one of those idiocracies of living in a country that pretends to be 4.
Denying the existence of an ethic group is extremely racist, and is often considered a precursor to other much more serious issues.
If you have any acquaintance with English history you would be well aware that there are native ethnic groups that have been in the UK since approximately the end of the younger dryas around 11,000 years ago.
The last major migration was the anglo-saxons around 1500 years ago.
These groups still exist and the majority of the UK population can still trace their origin back to one of these groups.
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