It is like National Velvet but far better, the rank outsider coming through to win a major sporting event. Emma Radacanu seems such a pleasant young lady discussing how honoured she is to have had a message from a role model that is the Queen, after her win. Wearing that crucifix, so unfashionable in Britain today, this is a girl who has worked hard to get A’s in maths and economics A levels just a couple of months ago and who talked of celebrating with chocolate frozen yoghurt with added chocolate. So like the whole nation I wake up thinking how wonderful this British sporting heroine is. But if there is a bandwagon there is always Nigel Farage.
His tweet after the win is “A global megastar is born. @EmmaRaducanu winning the US Open is truly incredible. “ This is, of course, the man who railed again and again against Romanian immigrants. Guess where Emma’s dad came from before he lived in Britain? Hypocrisy from Farage? No, never.
You and I see Emma as British, a thoroughly British heroine. But if you look on twitter there are those on the left stressing that she is the daughter of two immigrants. As, of course, is my wife who is more British in the way she thinks and acts than I am. But so what? Just as some immigrant turned criminal does not make a case against immigration per se, neither does Emma, or my wife, make a case for it per se. Immigration is a wholly different debate where one case study makes no difference.
But singling out Emma or my wife as somehow different from Brits like me and Mr Farage who, in both cases, had ancestors who arrived in England hundreds of years ago, or folks whose ancestors have been here since the time of Alfred the Great, is it not the left rather than we evil folks on the right, who create division?