The Bains Agenda

I always believed I am British, not just that – English. I still do. Because what else am I? England born and bred, schooling in England, culturally integrated entirely and I have never lived anywhere else.

This isn’t a choice or a decision as the media likes to present it; where some days I cherry pick my identity. This is a fact of my life and has always been the case.

My family have been here for decades, this isn’t a rare story and the prime minister of the country before last was an English man with brown skin – Rishi Sunak.

I always believed if we said we were English, were patriotic we would be accepted as such. That is what we were told. No to be honest, I wasn’t even told – it was just what I knew.

In 1967, Sikh writer Khushwant Singh said: “If you wish to earn respect from the British people … You will will achieve it only be being better citizens and more loyal to Britain than the British themselves. Your children must say with pride: I am a Sikh. I am an Englishman”

I am not a Sikh due to my beliefs in God (I am a humanist) but that is my heritage and I am very proud of it. I subscribe to Singh’s thinking.

It was all a lie. Doesn’t matter what we do, our very existence is disrespected and the goalposts shift.

In 2025, around 60 years since my grandparents arrived this is still a fight from top to the bottom of society to be seen as English.

Konstantin Kisin said Sunak wasn’t English because he was a brown Hindu and the BBC invite him onto Question Time.

Former Home Secretary Suella Braverman said she wasn’t English and nor could someone like her ever be in a Telegraph article because, apparently, that is only for White British people.

2025. Really think about this. Quite ironically, Kisin is a Russian immigrant. Braverman – don’t get me started. Sunak, in his defence, rebuked both of these racists. Quite the time when I now see Sunak as a genuinely decent statesman compared to what we have now.

And they are racist; how is this marketed as a legitimate debate? If you are born in England, you are English. The “horse born in stable” rhetoric is quite literally from the far right. Actual far right – BNP et. al.

David Cameron’s rhetoric of the 2010s now would unironically be labelled as that belonging to a woke lefty.

Tommy Robinson is less racist than Braverman on this. The EDL and Robinson have always said if you identify as English and are proud to be so, you are English.

Funny because if I pointed out to people that Braverman and the Telegraph are more right wing than not only Cameron but the EDL, they’d laugh. But they are.

In 2025, we have hurtled towards something quite scary that is genuinely unprecedented.

I am patriotic, non religious, integrated and still I have experienced and will experience racism.

Sikhs fought in both world wars and I’m proud of it and those soldiers. I like our history and I like my heritage; I don’t care what people think, I love being British.

Yet I cannot tell you how many times people have asked me, someone born decades after Khushwant Singh’s words, where I am from and refusing to accept the answer of England.

Even more irritating, some immigrants and people from abroad can be even worse; acting as if I am the delusional one and not those who cannot be bothered to learn basic differences between ethnicity and nationality nor read British history.

I loved England as a child and young adult. I still do. Now I am losing hope. The contract and the rules were all lies, a sham.

My generation should not have to put up with this. I should not put up with this. It’s been decades since we arrived now and anti racist marches in the 1970s/80s should have stopped.

It should be not be surprising to people that I see myself as 100% English, this was an argument made in 1967 and we’re still doing this in 2025.

What a farce.