We are two nations: one at ease with racial diversity, another still badly divided

The remarkable thing about the election of Britain’s first non-white Prime Minister is how unremarkable, for most people, it has been. American television hosts have invented public outrage that never occurred. Left-wing columnists have succumbed to racism themselves as they realise the party they revile as bigoted is in fact relaxed about being led by a British Indian. Most voters, meanwhile, are keen only to know what Rishi Sunak can deliver.

The story tells us something we ought to understand, but often forget. Britain is not America, with its racialised culture wars, universities riven by critical race theory, and original sin of slavery and racism. Neither, in this respect at least, are we like most other European countries, where it remains unimaginable that a non-white politician might become prime minister or president.

We are, on the whole, relaxed about the multiracial nature of our country. Estimates suggest one in eight English households includes more than one ethnic group. In London, the number rises to one in five. Among those younger than 50, 12 per cent of couples are inter-ethnic, compared to six per cent for couples older than 50. These days, concern about under-performance in education focuses not on children from minority communities, but from the white working-class, who are far less likely to attend university than their Asian, Chinese, black and mixed-race contemporaries.

Whether we are talking education, or employment, health outcomes, home ownership or anything else, such disparities have little or nothing to do with skin colour. They can often be explained partially by factors such as economic geography: children with minority backgrounds are disproportionately likely to live in London, for example, where education outcomes are better, than white working-class children. But culture – whether that is connected to the aspirations of the kinds of people who are motivated to migrate, or norms and values shared by members of specific communities – is also crucial.

Here, the lack of focus on Sunak’s background may hinder our understanding of him. For his Indian heritage and Hindu beliefs matter. With his mother-in-law, Sunak has visited places revered by Hindus, like the Ganges at Haridwar and important temples in India. He swears his oath as an MP on the Bhagavad Gita, the holy book of Hinduism. “Faith is important to me,” he has explained. “I’m a practising Hindu. I pray with my kids and visit the temple when I can.”

The virtues promoted by Hinduism – honesty, patience, compassion, restraint – are virtues in which Sunak believes. The virtues promoted by Indian culture – respecting your elders, doing your best for your family, valuing education, working hard, making sacrifices now for the future – are not only still with him, but audible in his political pronouncements.

And Sunak’s story as the son of migrants helps us to understand his unabashed, but far from over-the-top, patriotism. His parents chose to move to Britain, and, as he said in his maiden Commons speech, Britain treated them fairly and rewarded their efforts. “His parents worked so hard to become British,” a friend explains, “so being British is a really big and important thing for him. Lots of Brits are embarrassed by our history, our culture, who we are. Not Rishi.”

Sunak is far from an isolated case. He is one of a new generation of middle-class, successful Brits from migrant families. Sunak, and others like him, are going to change Britain, places within Britain and many British institutions, including Parliament and our political parties. Already the Conservative Party is home to rising stars like Kemi Badenoch and Claire Coutinho. They are bold about their belief in strong families, self-reliance, and the importance of work, and unembarrassed in their patriotism and support for unifying national institutions. The reason for the bewilderment on the Left is that the rise of minority politicians is giving new wind to conservative values.

And yet it would be an error to conclude simply and complacently that Britain is the world’s greatest melting pot; that our multicultural experiment is an unalloyed triumph. For the task of maintaining a cohesive society amid radical diversity of values is far from easy. Studies from around the world find a negative correlation between increased diversity and social trust. We need a common culture and strong national institutions within a single legal framework to maintain our shared identity and the solidarity, sacrifice and compromise required by citizenship.

We are still some way from achieving that. Only weeks ago, Leicester saw pitched battles between groups of Hindus and Muslims. The response of the city mayor, Sir Peter Soulsby, was to commission an inquiry by an academic, Dr Chris Allen, who has already written about the violence, blaming British Hindus and suggesting reports of Muslim involvement are “Islamophobic”. In fact, research by Policy Exchange and the Henry Jackson Society makes clear that Islamist agitators were at the heart of the trouble.

From the case of the Batley school teacher still in hiding to the Trojan Horse takeover of schools in Birmingham, from today’s firebombing of the Dover Immigration Centre to the murder of Sir David Amess, the extreme examples of the failures of social integration are well known. But the facts show a more widespread challenge: the enormous growth in spontaneous segregation, demonstrated by growing numbers of “minority majority” and monocultural council wards, school pupil rolls, and the estimated 770,000 adults in England who cannot speak English.

In Britain we have much in which we can take pride, but this is a story of two nations. One nation, in which Rishi Sunak can become Prime Minister without murmur, and another nation in which communities can remain cut off from one another, hatreds can grow unchallenged, and women, girls and others who might deviate from regressive social norms can be mistreated and abused. The lesson of both nations is not that racial identity matters, but that norms and culture do. We must do more to promote the positive, more to resist the regressive, and much, much more to maintain and build up the customs and institutions that hold us together.