Reform UK’s Nadhim Zahawi Insists You Don’t Have To Be White To Be English

Reform UK’s Nadhim Zahawi has insisted that non-white people can be English.

His comments put him at odds with his party colleague Suella Braverman, who has insisted she is not English despite being born and brought up there.

She said: “My family and ancestors have a link to Britain which spans centuries. But in no way are we English. Yes, I was born in England, speak English and support the England football team. And indeed, I love England and the English people.

“But to say I’m English is to take a ‘laissez-faire, anything-goes’ attitude to ethnicity, citizenship and identity. It also denies me my Asian heritage.

“The liberals (many of them in today’s Conservative Party) take this cosmopolitan approach to Englishness. They’re terrified of being called racist so they say that anyone, as long as they’re born here, can be English. I take the conservative approach.”

But appearing on Sky News, Zahawi, who like Braverman is a former Tory cabinet minister who defected to Reform, insisted that people born in England “have every right to be English”.

The former chancellor, who emigrated to the UK from Iraq when he was a boy, said: “I see myself as British. I wasn’t born in England. My parents were very proud to become British, and our adopted country has taken incredible care of us.

“I pinch myself every morning when I wake up and shave my head to think of how an 11-year-old boy who arrived here on these shores without a word of English ends up living in 11 Downing Street and doing everything I’ve done in between in business and in politics. It’s an extraordinary place.”

Asked if someone has to be white to be English, he said: “I don’t think you have to be white to be English. If you are born and bred in England, and you feel English, you have every right to be English.”

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