Oxford's oldest student newspaper

Independent since 1920

Interview: Mr No Opinion

Sathnam Sanghera, award-winning author and Times columnist, and I, a lowly second-year Oxford undergraduate, share a very important thing in common: people cannot tell if we are male or female. Perhaps that needs further clarification. We both have an unusual first name, which means it’s very difficult for others to decipher our gender, when say organising an interview for Cherwell via email. Indeed, as I stroll over to Sathnam for our interview in a London café, clutching my tea and dictaphone, he informs me that he had been expecting a ‘bloke’. I am in fact a woman. He sympathises, saying, ‘People often think I’m a woman. Sometimes male readers even send me flirty emails. I feel your pain.’ And so we begin.

Shortlisted for the Editorial Intelligence’s inaugural Comment Awards and author of the hugely successful autobiography  ‘The Boy With The Topknot: A Memoir of Love, Secrets and Lies in Wolverhampton’, Sathnam’s career in journalism has been as slick as his trademark thick black frames in his Times headshot. His stimulating comment pieces manage

to be analytical as well as humorous and personal. However, Sathnam isn’t so appreciative of his balancing act skills. He remarks self-deprecatingly, ‘There are lots of people who write comment without putting themselves in it, it must be great but I just can’t do it. I do that because I’ve got no opinions.’

While I’m sceptical about his modesty, I wonder how much of his writing is genuine. Has he ever been tempted to write something controversial simply for the sole purpose of sparking a fiery debate?
He replies, ‘The amount of opinions newspaper writers are required to have is unnatural, no one has that many opinions. I think to make it as a Fleet Street newspaper columnist you need to be a bit mentally ill. You’ve got to have that thing that makes you more mean and say more outrageous things than anyone else. I don’t think I’ve got into that sphere yet. However, you do feel that pressure because whenever you write something mean you do get such positive feedback.’

In an age of twenty-four hour media and in light of the Telegraph’s damning revelations about MPs’ expenses, how influential is the British media within the country?

‘They run the country’ he replies laughing but deadly serious. So are they more powerful than Gordon Brown? ‘I think Gordon Brown would probably say that. It’s not healthy necessarily but you can’t say that, no one can say that, especially politicians.’

Sathnam was brought up in Wolverhampton by his Punjabi speaking parents who emigrated from India in the 1960s. His father suffers from schizophrenia and is illiterate. His mother speaks a little English but cannot read it. Alongside prominent ethnic minority figures such as George Alagiah and Trevor Phillips, Sathnam is critical of the multiculturalist policies that have defined immigrant life in Britain.

‘I think the consensus is there, it was a huge mistake to have made. It causes me a huge amount of pain and agony that my parents can’t speak English and it wouldn’t have been bad if they had been forced to. It would have given them a better life and it would have made life less complicated for us but equally I can see my parents’ point of view. My mum had so much on her hands, bringing up four kids and dealing with a guy with schizophrenia that she didn’t have time to learn English. I wish she would but I just find it easier to forgive her and I don’t think we should judge her for it, given what she went through. However, it’s much too indulgent; we’ve got ghettos, complete islands, communities that haven’t integrated at all. Even in Wolverhampton there are Asian communities that aren’t integrated at all, they’re living like it’s India, and it’s terrible.’

From Multicultural Britain, we flip to the BNP. With 2 MEP seats secured and an imminent appearance on Question Time, does Sathnam think they are a force to be reckoned with?

‘A Times reader as a mark of their gratitude subscribed me to the BNP mailing list, so every day I get the BNP update’, he replies drolly. ‘In the 80s growing up, the National Front was a force to be terrified of, riots and skinheads. Compared to what the BNP is now, reading their stuff, they’re a joke. I don’t think they’re to be frightened of at all, they are a parody of themselves.’
So should they appear on Question Time?

‘We should give them airtime. In a democracy it’s important to make people feel like their views, not matter how offensive they are to other people, are allowed.  Having this out in the gimpy way the BNP talk is the best way to have it out, otherwise, it’s more likely to come out in violence.’

With public faith in political parties at an all time low, who does he think will win the general election? ‘The Tories will win, absolutely. I’m on the sideboard with my politics, I’ve always been a Labour supporter but equally I realise those days are over and there’s very few differences between the parties now. I grew up in a time when there was. I think we need a change of government because it is becoming complacent and very incompetent.’

Although Sathnam admires some Tories like Kenneth Clark and Michael Gove, he has great concerns about Mr Cameron’s privileged background.

‘Cameron says that his wife really connects him with real people, he goes home and he talks to someone from the real world, she really keeps his feet on the ground. She runs Smythson – they sell £500 notebooks! If that’s his idea of reality, hello! For God’s sake! He really does milk the family in a way I don’t think Gordon Brown does. It’s cynical and he’s a gimp. I really hate him.’

OUCA’s recent scandal hasn’t helped Cameron shed the party’s elitist and sometimes xenophobic image. However, I am surprised to hear that this type of behaviour is endemic within the national Tory party.

‘David Cameron does all this stuff about his image but if you talk to normal Tory members, this is what they’re like, they tell horrible jokes and they’re very un P.C. I spent a long time being a political reporter and it’s my experience of what the Tory party rank and file are like. They’re living in the 1950s.’

Sathnam is every bit as convincing and witty as his weekly columns suggest. Not bad for someone once rejected for the editorship of Cambridge’s Varsity Student Newspaper. The reason? ‘The problem with your application is that we didn’t believe a single word that you said.’

Check out our other content

Most Popular Articles