Suella Braverman a disgrace to humanity

Does she? The quote look like it applied to how she feels.

I think it’s important she gets to say she feels Asian not English without rancour.

She's not some random person off the street, is she? She's an experienced politician who knows exactly how her words will be interpreted.

And there's a pretty obvious irony in advocating an approach to immigration that might well have prevented her own parents from settling in the UK had it been in place when they arrived.

She's proving remarkably useful to Reform in pushing this rhetoric into the mainstream.

So the quote is just that she feels Asian not English and it’s necessary for her to say the opposite?

I disagree. Let women self define their identity either way.

I didn't say she couldn't define her own identity. Quite the opposite. I'm questioning why she's choosing to articulate it in this particular way, in the current political climate.

Again, she's not some random person off the street. She's an experienced politician, and I think it's reasonable to expect a more measured and considered contribution from someone who knows perfectly well how her words will be interpreted and used (from both sides of the political spectrum).

Because she is overstepping and it’s about personal choice. As she is a politician she should keep her personal choice and feelings to herself!
If someone has British nationality that is all that matters. They can feel English or Scottish or Welsh or NI (or more than one of those) and if their grandparent was born in eg Jamaica, they can if they want to also feel ties there. It’s their choice, not for someone in power to tell them. Also with ethnicity questionnaires you can insert „prefer not to say“. That is people‘s choice.
Same with dual nationals, English law doesn’t recognise them to be lesser than those who only have the British passport.
The world is increasingly global and mixed. And dinosaurs from the last century obsessing about national identity and nation states and ethnicity and how many generations of it, it’s regressive. She needs to look forward as a politician not backward. It’s completely irrelevant if I can trace my roots back one generation or to Norman times. It’s all just time periods. And it’s about my personal identity it has nothing to do with the State!

She can say how she feels.

I think the question and response should be scrutinised more.

Fiona Bruce specifically asked Suella B how she felt and followed it up with another question. Why target the Asian woman and why deny her the right to say exactly how she feels about her own identity. And then to push the racist line which SB correctly says I can’t be that towards myself.

The whole interaction exposes the BBC angle more than anything.

And then the outrage as per this thread with the op’s hyperbole. All because a female politician said truthfully how she feels about own identity.

I think you're being either very generous in your interpretation of her motives, a little naive about the political context, or wilfully obtuse about the distinction I'm making. Nobody is questioning her right to define her own identity. I'm questioning the political purpose her words serve. Those are two entirely different things.

She either says how she doesn’t feel to appease you and others or not. I prefer any female politician to just say how they identify.

Whether it’s Kemi or Suella, and their answers might be very different. Good. Let there be that difference.

No one should be so affronted by any woman just saying who they are.

And a lot of this is on the BBC for following this line for a rise from the public. Perhaps they could ask someone else not SB.

It's perfectly reasonable to scrutinise her words and their political implications without denying her right to say them.

It's perfectly reasonable to scrutinise her words and their political implications without denying her right to say them.

"Disgrace to humanity" seems maybe a bit more than scrutiny though? I think this kind of overreaction to her words helps the hard right by making them seem like the reasonable ones in these debates.

You’re not scrutinising why the question was aimed at Suella B though. I’d be annoyed if everyone targeted me on any show when everyone else gets to just not answer re their identity.

I think Suella and Kemi have every right to answer truthfully and to feel annoyed at why they as female politicians are put under an extra spotlight. I’d feel like saying fuck off too, but probably not say that.

Look everyone unless your DNA test proves to the authorities you are at least 25% Celtic, sorry you ain’t English enough. Is that what people want? It is complete and utter nonsense all round.

Presumably as she's a prominent politician on a politics show that she presumably volunteered to take part in?

What should she have said in your view?

Should she have lied about how she feels? If so why

She could quite easily have said that she personally identifies more strongly with her Asian heritage doesn't see herself as English, while acknowledging that many people of Asian heritage feel entirely English. That would have been a perfectly truthful and rather more nuanced answer.

Ok so asked a direct question about how she feels personally she has to couch it in a group answer. I don’t see why someone who is British-Asian specifically has to do that.

The BBC do a good line in othering by targeting SB with this. I can see why female politicians don’t always sound pleased to be on the receiving end.

It reminds me of the Margoyles questions to Andi Peters. But politically SB is enough to get extra rancour .

We aren't a nation of immigrants really. More immigration has happened this century than the previous 1000 years.

She doesn't have to do anything. I'm suggesting what a more measured response might have looked like, since you specifically asked.

I don't disagree that the BBC's questioning can be scrutinised. But being asked a question on a political programme doesn't place a politician's answer beyond scrutiny. Nor does questioning the wider implications of her remarks amount to denying her identity.

I'm not sure why you keep treating those things as mutually exclusive.

We've had more immigration in the last 30 years than the previous 1500.

In my opinion she’s an utter cunt. But what intrigues me is why she’s demonising immigrants so much when she is second generation, does she not realise once those who haven’t been born here are repatriated it’ll be her next if her party gained power?

I really get anyone with her background pushing these messages, it’s bizarre.

So would your ethnically Scottish person have purely those ancient ancestors or is it more likely that in the 21st Century they have a mixture of ethnicities from the British Isles and Northern Europe?

What is your definition of English ethnicity as opposed to British?

She is a disgrace like all Reform politicians and far right nutters.

She is an example of someone who has internalised xenophobia and racism and somehow thinks that if she acts like she openly despises people who actually look like her then she will be accepted by the type of people who vote Reform as one of their own.

Sad that someone could show such self hatred and also be naive enough to think that the people she is trying to appeal to will ever see her as anything other than someone from an immigrant background and 'less than'.

White English people are a mixture of Norman, German, Vikings, Celts Roman and so on. So quite a few of their ancestors came on 'small boats' themselves...