Look, this is becoming awkward now. Britain’s prime minister? Asian. London’s mayor? Asian. Scotland’s first minister? Asian. His main opponent? Asian. As for the probable next chairman of the BBC, he isn’t Cornish.
“Chin up, son,” I keep wanting to say to friends in the ethnic majority. “These jobs come round again.”
This column isn’t about the diversification of Britain’s governing class. It is about the lack of domestic interest in that trend. The arrival of a non-white prime minister detained British commentators for, what, the first week, at most? I, who field lots of interview requests from broadcast producers, some of whom are sweet enough to think that I am awake and ambulant at 8am, have never been invited to discuss this subject. You don’t hear much in the way of conservative misgivings about the change in who runs Britain, or much liberal self-congratulation either. After four years in America, the relative absence of an identity discourse is startling. (And, to me, freeing).