Rishi Sunak became the new Conservative leader on Diwali, the Hindu festival of light. Remember the old joke about a cynical reporter’s story on Jesus walking on water? ‘Jesus can’t swim,’ read the headline. Similarly, to some grubby US-based race-baiters, the UK’s first Asian-heritage Hindu PM, welcomed in his first appearance in parliament as a happy chapter in Britain’s national story, shows its deep racism. Of course there is still racism there, as is true of every country. Trust me, no Western country that I’ve passed through – that’s quite a large number, since you ask – begins to approach the level of prejudice against dark-skinned people in India. Just check its matrimonial and skin care ads. On 23 October, LBC talkshow host Sangita Myska did a fantastic takedown of a racist caller’s dislike of Sunak because he’s not white. But if the UK was systemically racist, Sunak would never have made it into serious consideration. Kemi Badenoch, Suella Braverman, James Cleverly, Sajid Javid, Kwasi Kwarteng and Priti Patel are among other recent non-white Conservative ministers. Their examples prove that neither failure nor success attaches to racial, religious and gender identity. Far from an unchanging bastion of white privilege, Britain is a diverse, tolerant, multicultural democracy at ease with demographic diversity. The prospect of a Johnson comeback made the markets jittery; Sunak’s triumph calmed them down.

Sunak’s maternal grandmother sold her wedding jewellery to buy a one-way ticket from Tanzania to the UK in 1966, then saved enough from her meagre book-keeping job to pay for her husband and family to join her a year later. Her daughter studied pharmacy and married a GP. As a child Rishi delivered prescriptions from the family pharmacy on a bicycle, studied hard, did well, married into genuine wealth and today is PM of the UK. What’s not to like about this three-generation immigrant success story? If Labour pursues the politics of envy in the next election, well, good luck with that. Sunak’s back story is a net asset for the Tories. The election will turn on his performance as PM. He’s been elected by the party’s MPs for competence, judgment, economic skillset, calmness and steadiness. Johnson, Ardern and Trudeau are the charisma-heavy alternatives. In particular, Sunak must reconcile the economic imperative of market-reassuring austerity measures by cutting costs and raising tax with the political imperatives to unify the party and cushion already hurting people from cost of living pressures. The general election is two years away; the markets get to vote now.

The bad news on UK race relations is evidence political correctness is used to hide the ethnicity of sexual predators in a risky effort to keep communal peace. In July, the inquiry chaired by Tom Crowther QC submitted its report on the scandal in Telford, West Midlands confirming that more than one thousand young girls – predominantly white and working class, many of them in care – had, since 1980, been ‘groomed, drugged, raped, gang-raped, passed around like pieces of meat by groups of predominantly British Pakistani men’ (Tom Slater of Spiked). Reports on a long list of other similar scandals offered dispiriting serial failures by local councils and police too afraid to intervene ‘for fear of allegations of racism’ or threats to community tensions. The authorities often dismissed the victims as ‘wayward’ girls who were authors ‘of their own downfall’. To the perpetrators they were white trash who got what was coming to them.

Harriet Sergeant notes the absence of mass street marches by outraged people in response to the grooming-gang cases, because ‘Victim and perpetrator are the wrong class and race’. When social workers tried to report a crime, they were sent on race-relations courses and threatened with disciplinary action ‘if they didn’t remove the fact they were identifying the person as a Pakistani male’. The Telford inquiry report described the majority of perpetrators as men of ‘southern Asian heritage’. Really? Instead of smearing every southern Asian male, why not say ‘the group trials’ involved ‘scores of men of Pakistani heritage’ (Sergeant)? (Similarly, if there were reports of dowry deaths in a southern Asian community, my initial suspicion would fall on Indian families.) Hiding the facts feeds conspiracy theories, reduces trust in the police and criminal justice system and channels anger towards all southern Asians.

Churchill noted that capitalism produces the unequal sharing of wealth and socialism the equal sharing of misery. Could it be that conservative parties attract the creators of wealth and prosperity while socialist parties perpetuate poverty and misery? The latter seem to fear celebrating racial progress because it undermines their claim to a monopoly over the oppressed in permanent need of state handouts. Labour MP Nadia Whittome tweeted (and deleted) that Sunak’s triumph is no ‘win for Asian representation’ because he is a multimillionaire. Labour candidate Faiza Shaheen feels the same. But former cabinet minister Javid said, ‘I’ve always believed the UK is the most successful multiracial democracy on earth – and this takes it to a new level  and it’s something we can all celebrate’. Earlier, Labour MP Rupa Huq had insisted that then-chancellor Kwarteng was only ‘superficially black’ because he’d attended very expensive private schools and spoke with a posh accent. How dare he!

This echoes Joe Biden’s infamous remark that African-Americans who vote for Trump ‘ain’t black’. There’s little doubt that Democrats are guilty of the soft bigotry of low expectations. It’s also clear that blacks and Hispanics (most of whom have a visceral loathing for the politically correct term ‘Latinx’) are peeling away in large numbers from a hitherto solid Democratic voting bloc. One reason is almost certainly resentment at being taken for granted and condescended to. Hispanics are also more religious and believe strongly in ‘traditional’ values of the family as the core unit that binds society, individual responsibility, work ethic, and reward for talent and application.

Given a choice, they will preference the aspirational party that puts in place an educational and economic system to promote initiative and an incentive structure to channel and reward aspirations, over one that stifles initiative and encourages grievance and victimhood to be continually massaged by the dead hand of the state. Sunak’s story is inspirational for every immigrant who has fled poverty and persecution to any available land of opportunity. Do Australian centre-right parties have the nous to emulate their British counterpart and cultivate socially conservative immigrant constituencies instead of insulting some by questioning their loyalty?

Read my lips: You do not own us. We are free agents, not slaves on your party plantation. We don’t want your made-up excuses for our failures. Give us the ladder of opportunity and see how far up we can climb.