So today is a weird day, we have the first ethnic minority Prime Minister in our history in the UK. This should be a moment filled with joy and pride. A moment where the ceiling has been broken. A moment where we’ve finally shed the shackles of Britain’s racist past. The moment where we look to a brighter future.

It is not that moment.

Rishi and I have some strange similarities. He’s better in almost every way though. We’re both from East African Indian families who emigrated in the 1960s. Both of us have pharmacists as parents, his dad was a GP though. We grew up 20 miles apart, both went to private school (his was better than mine). We both did a hybrid economics degree (he went Oxford, and I went to LSE, better than me). He became a hedge fund manager, and I became a trader (again better than me). We both have two daughters. The only facet I win in is I’m taller!

Why does this matter though? I think, because it gives me an insight into his mentality and most likely a parallel in how we view and approach this historic moment. Unfortunately, that is not a pretty story. We grew up in the upwardly mobile, hardworking first-generation households where the drive was to achieve more than the generation before. That generation of Indians are now entrenched in the middle class (with the second generation like Rishi and me grabbing opportunities never available to our parents). However, how we got there is the sad story. I would wager that Rishi’s story mirrors mine below.

We, and our parents, got here by working phenomenally hard. We were grateful for every opportunity we got, even if we deserved that opportunity. We were grateful that we didn’t receive the racist abuse in our faces that our parents did. The words of my father ring through my ears “you’ll have to work double as hard as the white person next to you to get the same result”**. We were told not to rock the boat, but to fit in as best as we can. To go unnoticed and incrementally climb, to not self-promote ourselves or we’ll get shot down. To hide our cultural heritage and bury it deep down. To get our heads down and get on with it. To be part of the system rather than a change agent within it.

As a result, the racism our parents experienced did not melt away but rather it drifted into the background. Into the dark corners. It went underground and those who wanted to preserve the current system rather than challenge it, did it behind closed doors where we couldn’t see or hear the racism. I’m seeing that on show itself today. There are reports from many reputable media outlets, self-congratulating themselves and Britain that we have chosen an ethic minority Prime Minister. That we’re not talking about him being brown but just talking about him being the winner.

Colour is not blind though. If we truly had moved on, we would be celebrating that he is brown, that he is different to what we’ve had before. We would celebrate that this difference could bring an alternative viewpoint. I think I need to remind people this is the same individual whose biggest scandal to date is his wife paying taxes in America and India (where she is a citizen and was born). This was nothing illegal yet was capitalised on by the media and public as a slur on him. This is the individual who lost the popular ballot amongst Conservative members when facing an incompetent adversary. This is the individual who we collectively acknowledge would probably have lost again had Boris Johnson run and it gone to a members vote.

He didn’t win this because of our ascent to a truly meritocratic country, he won it through fortune and lack of choice. Even though he did deserve it.

Back to the original premise and our foundational lessons from our parents. Rishi won’t say anything because he won’t want to rock the boat. The lessons we learned were hard learned and written deep down in our values. He can’t afford to say anything, it risks his political clout.

But I will.

I’m fed up with trying to fit in. I’m fed up with being denied opportunities purely because I don’t look like someone who would normally do that. I’m fed up with being treated like I should be grateful for what I have earnt through hard work.

Some may say I’m an angry brown man (another racist stereotype). I’m not. I truly want to believe that my two daughters will grow up in a society where their skin colour, their surname or what their heritage is won’t matter. But it will. How many people who are reading this know that it is Diwali today? I reckon less than half and of that half some will think, as I’ve heard, that Diwali isn’t British. To those of you who think that and to the rest of Britain, we need to update the definition of what being British is. Only then will this be the moment when we look to a brighter future.

** I still see this in practice today. This is controversial but I think the Tory leadership election where Liz Truss beat out Rishi despite him possessing a superior political record, having wiped the slate with her in the debates and having won the most parliamentary endorsements was not about their politics. It was about a brown man leading their party and the country.