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| From The Periphery To The Metropole: Beyond its personal dimensions, Rishi Sunak’s rise speaks to the extraordinary dynamism and diversity of global capitalism. Brexiteer though Sunak may be, his rise to the prime-ministership of Britain will strike many Brexit voters as yet further proof that, like the guests at the Hotel California, they can check out any time they want, but they can never leave. |
WITH RISHI SUNAK’S “CORONATION” as Britain’s third prime minister in as many months, numerous imperial ghosts have been awakened. Sunak’s personal history is inextricably intertwined with the history of the British Empire’s rapid and reckless dissolution.
Beyond its personal dimensions, however, Sunak’s rise speaks to the extraordinary dynamism and diversity of global capitalism. Brexiteer though Sunak may be, his rise to the top will strike many Brexit voters as yet further proof that, like the guests at the Hotel California, they can check out any time they want, but they can never leave.
Global capitalism will always have the last laugh – eh Liz?
Born in Southampton, Sunak is no less “British” than his hapless predecessor. All of us are, however, an inextricable part of our parents’ stories, and Sunak’s parents’ story is about East Africa.
For the peoples of India and Africa the Indian Ocean has always been a mighty highway. Backwards and forwards across it travelled all kinds of cargoes and all kinds of people. Under the tutelage of successive empires, this easy commerce, and the cultural enclaves it created, thrived. It was only when the last of these overlords, the British, cut and ran, that East African cosmopolitanism began to fray.
Substantial Indian minorities in the newly independent former colonies of the British Empire sat uneasily alongside the African nationalist majorities who found themselves governing nation states whose borders owed more to the compromises of competing imperial map-makers than they did to the economic and cultural history of the regions they were carved out of.
Descendants of the tens-of-thousands of indentured Indian labourers imported by the British to build their imperial infrastructure, and of the Indian entrepreneurs and fortune-seekers who accompanied them, the Indians of East Africa had every reason to follow the retreating imperialists back to Britain. Among those who made their way to the Empire’s enfeebled heart were Yashvir and Usha Sunak, from Kenya and Tanzania respectively, Rishi Sunak’s parents.
Decolonisation and the struggle for independence have become a staple of the contemporary Left’s love affair with identity. Its lazy historiography casts all but the white villains of the imperial story as heroes. But, the thing to remember about empires, and the complex human societies they nurture, is that those positioned below the imperial rulers are by no means all inclined to cry: “I am Spartacus!” Certainly, empires can keep people down, but they can also lift them up. Imperialism creates winners as well as losers.
Rishi Sunak’s parents were never losers. Professionally-trained, English-speaking, confident in their ability to negotiate the labyrinthine class structure of British society, Sunak’s mother and father did everything within their power to ensure that their clever son’s abilities were fully revealed to those most likely to value them. Trees that fall in the forests of Winchester and Oxford are more or less guaranteed to make a great deal of noise.
From the dreaming spires of Oxford, the transition to the gleaming towers of London, was relatively seamless. Like so many who climb their way to the top of a social pyramid (as opposed to being born there) Sunak made a close study of those whose ranks he planned to join.
For all their sneers, the British upper-classes have never forgotten that cash-money is always trumps. A coat-of-arms is no substitute for a seven-figure bank-balance – not least because a nine-figure bank-balance can always buy you one!
To fully appreciate the role of money in a globalised capitalist world there is no experience more educative than working for a hedge-fund. And assuredly, there is no more telling proof of how much a hedge-fund manager has learned than arranging to marry a billionaire’s daughter.
Interestingly, among the last hedge-funds with which Sunak was associated was called Theleme Partners. The name is instructive. It is derived from the Greek word for the human will. “Thelema”, derived from the same word, was (and maybe still is!) the name given to a belief system combining occult knowledge with esoteric philosophy. Among its most famous devotees were the British “magus”, Aleister “The Beast” Crowley, and the founder of Scientology, L. Ron Hubbard.
The first rule of Thelema sounds about right for a hedge-fund manager: but, maybe, just a little bit alarming for the Prime Minister of Britain.
“Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.”
This essay was originally published in The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 28 October 2022.
8 comments:
"For all their sneers, the British upper-classes have never forgotten that cash-money is always trumps. A coat-of-arms is no substitute for a seven-figure bank-balance – not least because a nine-figure bank-balance can always buy you one!"
Not quite. Even though money talks, there is a section of the British upper classes which despises "new money", and probably always will. Even those who bought their titles in the 19th century are sometimes considered just a little beyond the Pale.
Sunak has no roots in India, someone interviewed actual Indians in an effort to get their reaction to one of their own becoming the Prime Minister of Britain, most of them were meh. I think one of them said something like "he's hardly a battler given he was born wealthy and married into more wealth." But I suspect that no matter how hard he tries he will still be considered just a little infra dig in some circles. Below the salt. Brown.
Interesting though, all three of the people of Indian descent that happen to be British MPs that I have actually come across in the news, have decided that their families having settled in England quite successfully they will now pull the ladder up behind them.
Oh well, Britain used to be a backward island off the coast of Europe – and it seems to be reverting to that now. Pity, because it was Britain's economic development that got them through the Napoleonic wars. Their taxation/banking system was, or should have been at least the envy of Europe. It financed not only their own war effort but that of much of Europe, including ironically, Napoleon's. That is going inexorably down the gurgler. Brexiteers seem remarkably quiet about that, but I guess the more prominent of them have moved their businesses elsewhere and claimed Irish citizenship. :)
I think that Brits and the rest of us need as much education and coaching on politics and government as Philomena Cunk does on this unique examination of London architecture. Probably to many her depth of knowledge matches their understanding of the hallowed Parties of the UK. 'What Party?' they might say queruously. 'No-one ever invited me.' It's good to have a larf occasionally, even if a bit forced!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H07Pudtl-Ro
For all their sneers, the British upper-classes have never forgotten that cash-money is always trumps. A coat-of-arms is no substitute for a seven-figure bank-balance – not least because a nine-figure bank-balance can always buy you one!
You are confusing the true upper-class with the upper-middle-class. The former care about lands, titles, and which school you went to (buying a coat of arms? How nouveau riche). It's the latter that care about the money.
It's the difference between Sunak (or Boris Johnson) and Sir Alec Douglas-Home.
The Conservatives have so far given the UK three female Prime ministers and its first Prime Minister of Indian ancestry, who is also a practicing Hindu. Labour? None of the above. How this must stick in the Left's craw! Today's identity obsessed Left are the biggest racists on the planet.
The Upper Classes (with titles) are a tiny, probably less than 0.0001%, of the population. When I was at Cambridge in the 1980's there was apparently only one student in my matriculation year who could be classed as nobility. That is out of 3,000 matriculating students. The majority (around 60%) were from the Upper Middle Classes (children of senior civil servants, high level professionals, successful business people, academics). The rest were from Comprehensive schools or were overseas students.
Rishi Sunak would fit into Upper Middle Class, based on his parents vocations. They probably had to struggle to get their own qualifications, though there was always, as Chris has pointed out, a significant number of such people from the colonised people in the Asian and African colonies. Ghandi for instance, a qualified lawyer having quaifiled in the 1890's. And of course Nehru.
That might be Sunak's origins, but he himself is solidly British. Born there, being a child of an immigrant family aspiring to fully fit in. It is easy for him to see himself as British as opposed to nativist English, Scottish, Irish or Welsh. And that is part of his strength. A bit like Americans who identify as second or third generation Italian or Irish Americans. It is the American part of their identity that matters.
It has been obvious for the last 30 years that Britain has been transformed in terms of its population. And that is right throughout all social and economic classes. So it was inevitable that would be reflected in the House of Commons, on both sides. Eventually one of the children of immigrants was going to get the top political job.
I guess the exception might be the tiny fraction of the population that is the hereditary titled in the Upper Classes. Though even that must be changing with marriage in, as we have seen with the Royal Family. In that case the difficulty is derived from her being American, not her ethnicity.
Perhaps the thoughtful upper class extend their brain power and become more humane. I'm thinking that Prince Charles paints, and has written and illustrated a children's book. Sir Winston Churchill painted. Our Sir John Marshall wrote a children's book.
I can't imagine what sort of children's book Ron Brierley would write with what illustrations, or Luxon or Key or Judith C. An exception to the general rule of low achievement of dissolute mercantile merchants could be Boris Johnson as he has could well have talents as yet untapped, for surprising the world about his initiatives.
A lot more focus than Boris' Turkish or Winston's Iroquois heritage.
Most of the English aristocracy was killed-off in the Wars of the Roses. Most of those pretending to aristocratic status are parvenus. True some can stretch their lineage back to profiteering from former monastery lands. But the rest are of even later elevation, with much mingling of genes with folk just one or two generations out of the "trade" category.
In contrast, it took sixteen quarterings of nobility for a young woman to be presented to Hapsburg emperors.
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