Opinion: The Question of Englishness and Race Refuses to Go Away, Writes Jason Okundaye

In a Guardian opinion column, writer Jason Okundaye examines the recurring political question of whether English national identity can include people who are not white, arguing that the debate keeps resurfacing in British political discourse despite pushback from figures across the political spectrum.

Okundaye's column points to comments from former prime minister Rishi Sunak, who wrote in the Times that national identity should not be reduced to a "DNA test." Sunak, the UK's first prime minister of colour, has previously described being told by a podcaster that he was not English because he is a "brown-skinned Hindu," a claim he characterised as a "reverse Tebbit test" — a reference to the sociological concept originally used to measure the loyalty of immigrants and their children based on which national cricket team they supported.

According to the column, Sunak warned that defining Englishness in purely ethnic terms risks putting the country on a "very slippery slope," distinguishing between English as what some regard as an ethnic identity and British as a civic one, while cautioning that most people may not register that distinction.

Okundaye's piece notes that even a figure such as Jacob Rees-Mogg, generally associated with the political right, has pushed back on defining Englishness in exclusively ethnic terms, which the column presents as evidence that the debate persists even when prominent conservative voices reject the ethnic framing.

The column frames the durability of this discourse as "deeply troubling," suggesting that the recurrence of questions about who counts as authentically English, regardless of formal political consensus against ethnic definitions, points to unresolved tensions in British society around race, belonging and national identity.

The piece is presented as opinion and reflects the views of its author, an assistant Opinion editor at the Guardian.