UK Conservatives just choose a brown man as their new Prime Minister

I'd love to have an MRI of the tangles created in Progressive "conseratives are racist!" brains.

Any Progs here want to chime in with their explanation for how such a thing happened - given all that racism? I'm fascinated to hear your theories. Is Rishi into self-hate? Maybe you'll deny his race? Have at it, Progs .. give us your best shot!

 

Bump to get this into main forum.

 

I honestly don't know if that's a Labourite line or not. Obviously for American progressives it's an article of faith, but I don't want to interpret Britain's racial politics through the lens of an American one. More interesting to me is that Britain (according to twitter) has now a pagan ruler for the first time in a thousand years.

 

What's funny is just how rare it is for a non-white person even to be part of a conservative party, let alone elected or appointed to a high position. Obviously it's a rare enough thing that you felt compelled to boast about how not racist conservatives are based on this lone incident Reminds me of the old "I can't be a bigot because I have Black/Hispanic/Jewish/etc. friends!" canard. Remember when Trump played that card?

 

Oooh ... naughty!

I hadn't even thought of that. No doubt he'll be sacrificing virgins at Stonehenge every Solstice.

 

I have no boast at all, Love. I couldn't possibly care less about the man's skin tone.

But I know skin tone matters ENORMOUSLY to Progs, so here we are.

 

Bumpage

 

You care so little that you started a thread about it.

 

They should start their own white progressive caucus membership....

 

And you care so much to answer it..

 

What a strange thread. The answer is that the percentage of racists on the right in our country is much less that yours. I have been saying that for years.

 

Sunak is a Hindu.
Not a pagan in the sense I understand it.
He is also, as Nye Bevan once said, a Tory, therefore lower than vermin.

 

' ~ A brown "man" ... ? How do we know ? Did a Biologist confirm this person's gender ?
We must be conscientious of the non-binary too ...

 

I think the key mistake here is to treat racism as something rational that can be rationally explained like that. Racism, like pretty much all bigotry and discrimination of which it is a subset, is irrational by definition, aptly demonstrated by the very fact of such inconstancies.

Bigotry is really just about division and tribalism, defining and identifying an "other" to unify people against. To achieve this, it can be and is commonly flexible and mailable to suit any given set of circumstances. It doesn't really matter who someone actually is, all that matters is being able to define some kind of group and establish simple ways to label and identify them. Whether certain individuals end up included or not (in general or on any given day) doesn't really matter.

In the UK, this has been as much about class and community as skin colour anyway. There was already great division on perceived class grounds, which were already used in the way I describe above. When significant numbers migrant came to the UK, they fell in to those existing divisions, but were typically treated as "others" by all of the existing British groups and divisions. Skin colour and culture just become convenient ways to categorise those new "others".

Someone like Rishi Sunak is able to deal with that by dint of his wealth, education and general presentation, giving him many of the trappings and appearance of being "upper class", rendering his skin colour the less significant and blatant dividing aspect. That is why much of the open "othering" criticism he has faced has been focused on that, accusing him being out of touch with the average voter because of his wealth and position rather than because of his racial and cultural background.

None of that changes the fact that lots of people with exactly the same background as Sunak are discriminated against simply on the basis that they can be visually identified as "others", even by people who support Sunak as their leader.

 

The Empire has come full circle! Great how diverse British politics are these days.

 

This thread is hilarious. Self righteous ignorance and a victim complex so often are.

A few months ago Rishi Sunak lost an election of Tory party members to the political equivalent of the 'special kid' in class. There was little doubt that he was the more intelligent & able person and had MUCH sounder policies, yet Liz Truss won 80,000 members to 60,000. Not even close. Fascinating. How to explain????

Flash forward about two months and Truss has been the worst PM in British history. In only 44 days she managed to get the Bank of England & financial markets to turn on their natural political allies, the Tory party, and caused utter chaos. The opposition is almost 30 points up in polling The solution? The Parliamentary party basically forced her out, chose Sunak as its preferred PM & then made sure the membership wouldn't get the chance to vote by creating a new rule that candidates needed 100 votes. Why create this new rule? Because the Tory members of Parliament knew that if Boris or even the dismal Penny Mordant would be a very good chance to beat Sunak in a vote of members. This is what is called 'the elites taking charge', and using that power to put a billionaire in charge.

So, why would Tory party members pick a person who was so manifestly incapable of becoming PM and then, wiht cahos ensuing, seriously consider replacing her with the man whose own colleagues refused to work with him or a woman who is once again clearly an inferior candidate to Sunak? Anyone who doesn't know the answer to that needs t ostop using mummy & daddy's computer & get off to bed.

The Tories chose a brown man as PM by making sure their own members didn't have a choice. Anyone who thinks this somehow proves 'conservatives aren't racist' is delusional. I wish him the best & hope he can stabilize Britain, but the best thing he could do is call an election & put a competent party in charge.

 

Pretty obviously it was bait.

 

I would love to see an end to racism in politics. I usually agree with crank but I don't agree with bringing this up.

 

The dude's empire is bigger than the Royals...go figure. The bankers and hedge fund managers are happy.

 

Yes .. I started it FOR our Prog friends. The clue is in the wording to that effect.

 

My country? I'm in the Commonwealth, so that's not likely. Even still, it's an article of faith amongst our own Progs that all conservatives are racist - regardless of where in the Western World they happen to live.

That's a fundamental of their overall antipathy. Without it they have almost nothing.

 

Well yeah, obviously. That was a yumourous take on the European concept of paganism. Druids and all that? Forget it.

Meantime, any white person who doesn't think highly of Rishi must necessarily be doing so due to his skin tone. Because they can't handle seeing a non-white person in power. We learned this new truth during the Obama years.

 

Thank you for actually providing the first workaround!

I can see how that could be torqued that into being, to make peace with ideology-damaging reality.

 

Okay ... well politics will politics. It was ever thus in these moments of chaos. There's often a golden child enabled into power. And FTR, they chose him because they wanted him for some reason. We can't know what that reason is. Maybe he's an Obama-esque patsy, but unlikely given conservatives aren't generally racist enough to play that kind of putrid game.

Anyone who thinks conservatives are necessarily racist is delusional. They can't hold a candle to Progressives when it comes to racism.

 

We agree. I brought this up because I wanted that MRI of the Prog brain.

You and I are long past wanting race in anything at all, but our Prog friends insist it's front and centre at all times, in all things.