Dr Samir Shah CBE is the Vice Chair of History Matters at Policy Exchange. He previously served on the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities.
When Rishi Sunak was elected as an MP, he swore his oath of allegiance in the House of Commons on the Bhagavad Gita, one of Hinduism’s most sacred texts. Many – if not most – people think that Hinduism is a religion of peace: an idea that’s taken root thanks to Mahatma Gandhi and his
‘The end of coal is in sight’ declared Alok Sharma, president of this year’s climate summit, to delegates in Glasgow attending COP26. Sharma was heralding the fact that more than 40 countries had agreed at the conference to phase coal out in the coming decades. But (and it is a very big but) along with
Cecil Rhodes’ contemporary, Rudyard Kipling, put it best: ‘If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs…’ That Rhodes’s statue will not fall is the result of a serious, difficult, but careful collegiate decision by the board of 47 fellows of Oriel College. It is good that Oriel dons kept their collective
Back in the 1960s, my brother Asim and I were smitten by the magical Manchester United trio of Law, Best and Charlton. We became London Reds and travelled on the MU Supporters’ Club coach to Old Trafford to watch our team — and we always went to see them play London clubs. But we stopped
Alison Roman, a celebrity chef and Instagrammer, has come under attack from woke warriors because of her dish ‘#thestew’. Her crime? The recipe uses spiced chickpeas, coconut, and turmeric – and Roman does not call it a curry. Once again, we are witnessing the sorry sight of people, organisations and institutions crumbling in the face
When Priti Patel told Labour MPs that she didn’t need any lectures on racism, they seemed to take it as a declaration of war. Last week, 32 of them signed a letter accusing the Home Secretary of ‘gaslighting’ black people’s experiences. The social media warriors were out in force, rebuking her for not being authentically
The humiliation of Chloe Smith at the hands of Jeremy Paxman last night was likened by one twitterati to watching a cat playing with a mouse before devouring it. Of course, Smith was hung out to dry by Osborne&Co. But I want to address another, as yet unremarked upon factor: the age gap between
For the past decade Samir Shah has been chair of the Runnymede Trust, devoted to studying ethnicity. Now, he says, the real problem in Britain isn’t so much racism, but “cultural cloning”. I first arrived in this country from Bombay in January 1960. Harold Macmillan had yet to make his Winds of Change blowing through