, which were then British possessions. Both came thence to Britain in the 1960s, and one of them became a tax collector for the Inland Revenue and received the MBE. Those letters stand for Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire. That honour would have been){kind=link}
It is not at all surprising that the Tory party, rather than Labour, has given us our first British Indian leader
This week, Joe Biden congratulated the man he called “Rashee Sanook” on becoming the UK’s first British Indian Prime Minister. He was speaking at the first large-scale celebration of the Hindu festival Diwali ever to take place in the White House. His audience interrupted to cheer the news from Britain.
President Biden went on to contextualise the event. It is 75 years since Indian independence from Britain, he said, and so it was “pretty astounding” this had happened. He also exclaimed at the fact that this Mr “Sanook” was leader of the Conservative Party, of all things.
I think a British audience is less astounded than the slightly confused President of the United States who has to engage daily with a racial politics much more bitter than our own.
Of course, most British people are very pleased that an Indian Briton has made it to the top. It is indeed historic. But the things that surprised Ole Joe Biden seem more explicable to us.