Does being born in a Stable make you a horse?
The David Vance BriefingRead More
Do you honestly believe that Englishness is an ethnicity?
Former Conservative Home Secretary and now Reform MP Suella Braverman clearly believes that it is and so even though she was born in Harrow, she says she is British, not English.
Current Conservative Leader Olukemi Olufunto Adegoke Badenock (Kemi to her friends) begs to differ!
Badenoch has declared that she didn’t want to explain to her son that some people do not think England’s Black footballers are English. She even recalled that Ian Wright and John Barnes were not treated as foreigners in an England shirt, closing the passage of her speech with “I am Black. I am British.” Here she is saying it;
One curious feature about her “memory” of John Barnes playing for England is that he retired from those duties in 1995 and Kemi only arrived here in 1996. Given that this was in the pre-internet era, before any social media and with there being no cable TV in Nigeria, I am curious where she got that particular memory?
Might it have been Michael Gove, who some allegedly wrote parts of her speech?
So, in THIS detailed Saturday Briefing, I want to get to the heart of the distinction between being “British” and “English”!
