This week's Spectator contains an interesting comment in its leader article about Home Secretary, Shabana Mahmood.
Writing about her speech to Labour conference, and various contributions to fringe meetings, the magazine comments "Mahmood demonstrates a commitment to open debate, empirical reasoning and civility towards her opponents which is more quintessentially English than the exlusionary identitarianism of her detractors."
These are the words of the world's oldest magazine, and one very much of the political right, about a British Asian Muslim woman representing its ideological opposition. A Tory magazine writing admiringly of a Labour politician.
But more than that it is a Tory magazine saying clearly, that as much debate has swirled in the past year, that Englishness isn't about race. It's about qualities and values.
It is about how we think rather than what flags we fly.
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This week's Spectator contains an interesting comment in its leader article about Home Secretary, Shabana Mahmood.
Writing about her speech to Labour conference, and various contributions to fringe meetings, the magazine comments "Mahmood demonstrates a commitment to open debate, empirical reasoning and civility towards her opponents which is more quintessentially English than the exlusionary identitarianism of her detractors."
These are the words of the world's oldest magazine, and one very much of the political right, about a British Asian Muslim woman representing its ideological opposition. A Tory magazine writing admiringly of a Labour politician.
But more than that it is a Tory magazine saying clearly, that as much debate has swirled in the past year, that Englishness isn't about race. It's about qualities and values.
It is about how we think rather than what flags we fly.