BoJo banished - Liz Truss down. Is Rishi next for the toaster? **threadbans in OP**

First of all, Albanian asylum seekers are still only a fraction of the nationalities that make up all of the asylum seekers that come across the channel every year

So the Spectator's spin that 'half of asylum seekers are Albanians is just a complete distortion, pure sophistry.

Secondly, the increase in Albanians happened in 2022. This year. What's your excuse for all the racism and anti immigrant sentiment in 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018.....

Thirdly, the increase in albanian asylum seekers is related to criminal activity, including drug smuggling and people trafficking. The police are failing to do their jobs. Rather than impose a ridiculously cruel and expensive collective punishment on thousands of asylum seekers. The UK should investigate the crimes and break up the gangs. Focusing on asylum seekers is just the Tories doing what they always do. Deflecting blame from their own corruption and failures onto a weak powerless scapegoat.

The highest standards....

There has been overtly racist backlash to the appointment of Sunak, but it is pretty much at the margins. Even racists recognise that being openly racist tends not to aid their cause.

But that, of course, gives rise to a suspicion that some of the opposition to Sunak, while not overtly racist, is nevertheless motivated by covert racism. It's not a wholly unreasonable suspicion, but it's also one that's very hard to verify or refute.

It has to be acknowledged that the UK now has a Hindu Prime Minister, a Black Foreign Secretary and a Muslim Mayor of London. That would have been unthinkable a generation ago, and it's testament to the multicultural nature of modern British society.

At the same time, it doesn't mean that there are no racial barriers in the UK; just that racial barriers are more surmountable than they used to be. It's been pointed out, only half-jokingly, that to get to where he is today, Sunak has had to repeatedly justify why he should be selected over obviously less-qualified white candidates (and indeed its only a few weeks since he lost out to an obviously less-qualified white candidate). It has also been pointed out that for many years he has begun many of his speeches with expressions of gratitude for all that the UK has done for him, the opportunities it affords him, and how fortunate he considers himself to be British. This is routinely expected of ethnic minority politicians in the UK in a way that it is not expected of white politicians. It's as if white voters - not all of them, of course, but enough of them to be an issue - require reassurance that an ethnic minority candidate won't be critical, won't be a threat to their conception of "Britishness".