Watching Prime Minister Rishi Sunak speaking from his lectern in Downing Street, I couldn’t stop grinning. As children, my sister and I would call each to the TV whenever we spotted a brown face, and say: “Look! An Asian like us!”
Watching Rishi Sunak step through that iconic black door at No10, I felt I was dreaming.
As a Labour supporter, I never in a million years thought I would express so much delight at a Tory Prime Minister. At the same time, what ran through my mind were the racist slurs I heard at school. The “jokes” that my home must always smell of curry.
Thousands of British Asians – all ethnic minorities – will also have experienced this racist abuse. Rishi Sunak as Prime Minister is the best answer we can give. He is a walking, talking, governing “up yours” to every racist in the land.
I can’t stop feeling gleeful because I know there will be some people apoplectic at what they are witnessing. These are the people, the racists, who don’t see a Tory, or a billionaire but a brown man in No10 – and they don’t like it.
People like the caller to Sangita Myska’s LBC radio show who said Sunak ‘isn’t even British’. Sunak knows what he’s up against.
He knows that even a loud section of Conservative Party members, will never accept him, simply because of his race.
Near the top of Sunak’s agenda must surely be tackling the racism in his own party and in wider society.
Him stepping through that big black door at No 10 is the right start.
And now when Asian children see another brown face on the telly it might be the most powerful person in the country.
