Sarah Champion

Mothin Ali is a Muslim politician in Leeds, which is one of my favourite parts of Pakistan. He's famous for celebrating his election victory by shouting "Allah Akbar! This is for the people of Gaza!" and having a wife who wears the full-on niqab. Not classically English traits. But he appeared at the Green Party conference to say he's as English as a cup of Yorkshire tea. In fairness, tea comes from India, so he's not far off. It would help his case that he's English if he wasn't wearing a keffiyeh, the native garb of distant alien countries, and didn't have a Palestine flag pinned to his chest, and hadn't punctuated his speech with a bongo drummer straight out of Indiana Jones. Still, he’s the deputy leader of the Green Party, so maybe he just wants to fit in with its liberal white women. Interestingly Mothin's parents, who came from Bangladesh, didn't wear traditional Muslim garb. His mum wasn't in a full burka, and his dad wore a suit. We're seeing this pattern across the West. First-generation migrants often work harder to fit in than their children do, and the expectation that second-generation migrants would be "just as British as anyone else" isn't true. People cling to their native identity. And as communities of immigrants grow in Britain, there's no British culture in those communities for people to integrate into. When Mothin Ali says that he's as English as a cup of tea, it's probably because he thinks that swathes of England are culturally Bangladeshi. And to be fair, he's right. The truth is, if Mothin Ali actually was English, he wouldn't be elected. He's elected by the Muslim community specifically because he's a Muslim. He campaigns in Bangla, which is the language of Bangladesh, not England. The idea that he's English is kind of ridiculous - if I went to Bangladesh and I had a son there, and I dressed them up as a little British man, with a bowler hat, little shepherd's pie and taught him to say "how do you do" and "please" and "thank you", and he then ran for election in Bangladesh, campaigning for votes from an insular British community that lived there, and in his election victory speech shouted, "Glory be to the Anglican Church! This is for the people of Swindon!" I don't think people in Bangladesh would be like, "Wow, this guy's so Bangladeshi. He's just as Bangladeshi as... (whatever drink they drink there, made at the side of the road in a dustbin)" But obviously this would never happen. I wouldn't move to Bangladesh because I don't want my children to grow up there. I want to live in Britain. And up until about 20 years ago, I did. A country is more than a collection of people who recognise the same teabag. If Ali is as English as anyone else, I want to hear him shout with the same enthusiasm because someone puts up a Union Jack or paints a roundabout with the English flag.