Rishi Sunak has shot down suggestions from Daily Show host Trevor Noah that backlash against his installation as prime minister was a result of his ethnic background, saying that the UK is not a racist country.
In a monologue posted on social media entitled ‘Unpacking the backlash against new UK PM Rishi Sunak’, South African comedian Trevor Noah suggested that there was a widespread racist reaction to the fact that Mr Sunak became the first prime minister of South Asian ancestry this week.
“Watching the story of Rishi Sunak becoming England’s first prime minister of colour, of Indian descent, of all these things and then seeing the backlash is one of the more telling things about how people view the role that they or their people have played in history.
“And what I mean by that is this, you hear a lot of the people saying ‘Oh, they’re taking over, now the Indians are going to take over Great Britain and what’s next?’
“And I always find myself going ‘So what? What are you afraid of?'”
He continued: “Why are you so afraid? And I think it’s because the quiet part a lot of people don’t realise they are saying is ‘We don’t want these people who were previously oppressed to get into power because then they may do to us what we did to them.'”
Responding to the rant, Sunak’s official spokesman at Downing Street balked at the accusations, saying that the PM does not believe the UK is a racist country.
Going further, former health secretary Sajid Javid, who is also of South Asian heritage, said that Noah’s interpretation was “simply wrong,” adding that the Daily Show host had presented a “narrative catered to his audience, at a cost of being completely detached from reality.”
“Britain is the most successful multiracial democracy on earth and proud of this historic achievement,” Javid concluded.
While there has been a backlash against Mr Sunak being elevated to prime minister, from figures on both the left and the right, this has mostly centred around the fact that he was put in Downing Street by the parliamentary Tory Party without a single vote being cast by the public, including from the Conservative party membership, who expressly rejected Sunak during the summer leadership campaign against Lis Truss largely over his insistence on keeping taxes at a seven-decade high.
Mr Noah’s argument is also undermined by the fact that during that same leadership campaign, Trade Secretary Kemi Badenoch, who is of Nigerian descent, was heavily favoured by the membership of the party over Sunak, but was prevented by MPs from reaching the final two membership vote.
The evidence of a supposed racist backlash against the first Indian prime minister seemingly centres around a single phone call to a radio station by a listener who expressed concern that Mr Sunak was “not English” and did not “love” the country.
Ironically, the caller seemed to be most concerned about Sunak’s business dealings in America as well as the fact that his wife used the United States as a tax haven under the non-dom status loophole.
Nevertheless, the comments from Noah fall in line with the rest of his tenure as host of a late-night ‘comedy’ programme, which has catered to the woke during his time behind the desk. The break from his predecessor Jon Stewart, who while liberal was willing to make fun of both sides, has not been a rating success for Noah, falling from 1.3 million viewers per night under Stewart to just 360,000 under Noah.
Last month, the South African announced that he will be stepping down from the gig, with his last show expected to be in December.
Follow Kurt Zindulka on Twitter here @KurtZindulka