UK PM race: Rishi Sunak's battle against odds

Poisoned debate

• No declaration of support for Rishi Sunak has surprised me more than that of Paul Goodman, editor of the centre-right political blog, Conservative Home, which has done as much as anyone to build up Liz Truss over the last three years as a prime-minister-in-waiting. Goodman, a former Daily Telegraph journalist who was a Tory member of Parliament for 10 years, astonished me with his article: “Why I will vote for Sunak.” He admits his vote may not make much difference: “I write as though the contest were still up for grabs. But if the sum of YouGov, Opinium and our own survey are right, Truss has already won the contest...”He comes down on Sunak’s side partly because his parliamentary colleagues prefer him to Truss. But what I find very revealing is the blind hatred against Sunak. One party member called him “a snake, untrustworthy person. He should get badly defeated and then he will vanish from politics.” “His wife paid no taxes in this country for 10 years,” said another (inaccurately). Then there was this offering: “I’ve already voted for Liz. And if the poll is fiddled with Infosys voters then I shall be campaigning against Sunak at the next election.” One member hit back: “As a white, working-class Conservative party member I have been taken aback by the barely concealed racism of many of the anti-Sunak tweets that are appearing on this site. It would be nice to see Liz denounce those who express their support for her in racist terms.”

Better times

• Not everything I have written about Salman Rushdie has been to do with Iran and the fatwa. A notable exception was when he married Padma Lakshmi in 2004, a sort of monsoon wedding in Manhattan. He was 56, his bride 25 years younger — it was his fourth marriage (after Clarissa Luard, Marianne Wiggins and Elizabeth West) and her first. The 275 guests, who entered the wedding venue in great secrecy, included Ismail Merchant, William Dalrymple and Tina Brown. Rushdie had done an exclusive deal with Vanity Fair but a mutual friend, the photographer, Jay Mandal, slipped in with a small camera,took some lovely pictures of Padma, looking dazzling in purple, and Rushdie, who was in a black sherwani, emailed them to me and telephoned with a detailed account of the ceremony which was basically Hindu with a touch of sufi and a bit of Shakespeare thrown in. Rushdie was both furious and delighted with the coverage

Deep roots

• Nimisha Madhvani took over last week as Uganda’s high commissioner in London, having done the same job in New Delhi. Upon learning that I had grown up in Patna,she introduced me to her housekeeper,Shanti, who is from Bihar, saying,“She has been with me for 14 years.” Nimisha, a member of the famous Madhvani family, arrived in India in 2007 as deputy high commissioner and was promoted to high commissioner a year later. On being asked what India was like, she told me “incredible”. “Everyone was so shocked.Where in India are you from? ‘No, I’m from Uganda.’ When I was in India, I was accredited to 13 countries.” Nimisha has been ambassador in Paris, Abu Dhabi and Copenhagen. But London is a key appointment made by Uganda’s president, Yoweri Museveni. He will be in London next month for events to mark the 50th anniversary of the expulsion of the country’s entire 90,000-strong Asian population by Idi Amin in 1972. Nearly 30,000 Asians who came to the United Kingdom as refugees have made a remarkable success of their lives in this country. Museveni has invited them back or at least sought help with the economic development of Uganda. It really is a stunningly beautiful country. Its red, fertile soil reminded me of Assam where I was born. Nimisha says that “the Indians have come back but these are Indians from India”. She adds that despite all her travels, her schooling in the UK and university in America, “I’m a pure vegetarian. No meat or fish enters our house. My mother and father were very, very strict. In London, I said I’ve got to have a new oven and a new fridge.”

Divided house

Papers have been speculating on Liz Truss’s likely cabinet appointments if she is named prime minister on September 5. Will she offer a job to Rishi Sunak? The Guardian thinks it is unlikely. “After the leadership contest exposed deep divisions between Truss and Sunak on strategy, it is hard to see how the pair can put things back together,” the paper reasons.

Footnote

• The new Elizabeth Line opened in London on May 24, but I travelled on it for the first time last week. It’s magical — smooth, clean and with a brand new train every five minutes. I urge all Indian visitors to London to try it. The only drawback is that at interchanges you do have to walk a long way to the line named after Queen Elizabeth in the 70th year of her reign.