When racists shout ‘Go home’, and you come from 15 places, what to do? | Hugh Muir

While accepting that David Lammy, the deputy prime minister and justice secretary is, for many, the human embodiment of Marmite – loved or hated, with not much in between – one can still question whether, for all his faults, he should “go home to the Caribbean”. Whether you agree with him over this or that utterance or the broad sweep of government policy, he has, unquestionably made his contribution to Tottenham, in north London, whose people he has represented for a quarter of a century, to parliament, as a senior MP, as foreign secretary and now as an important figure with several key portfolios.

So when a lieutenant of Nigel Farage, admittedly no fan of Lammy’s, suggests, without notable contradiction or condemnation from Reform, that Lammy “should go home to the Caribbean”, one is tempted to look at that askance. But then, in the year just past, when bigotry in frontline politics took off its training wheels and othering became the sport that everyone can play, the notion that someone who clearly belongs here should not belong here ceased to shock.

Bad stuff happened in 2025. The big stuff you know: the violent, toxically nativist besieging of asylum seeker hotels and the condoning of it by rightwing politicians and media outlets. The deployment up and down the country by hard-right activists of the British and St George’s flag, as a symbol, not of collective adhesion (as it surely can be) but of intimidation. The very public claims that Farage, a man with pretensions to lead our country, hurt people as a racist school bully and refuses to atone or suitably acknowledge their hurt now that he is a dog-whistling adult.

But I’m also thinking of less high-profile stuff. Like the friend who went for a weekend out of London into summery, leafy Middle England and, while waiting at a road junction, was assailed as a “black bitch” by a car passenger waiting at the lights, seeking to prove to an even younger passenger – perhaps his own son – that he wasn’t constrained by the strictures of woke.

Like the student who, along with his father, entered a pub in the West Country – to sample the local colour, watch a bit of football – and was advised to leave because it wasn’t a good or safe place for “Pakis”. Like the health worker friend whose job entails driving into towns and villages, who continued to do so amid the summer explosion of union flags but who said that as a black man entering those places, he felt, for the first time, the need to watch his back. All were acting as if they belong, with infinite justification. All were given reason to doubt. Diehard populists and racists want that kind of Britain and they’ve had a good year. According to a new study by the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR), the number of people absorbing and mirroring hard right narratives is rising. Time to take stock: divided, resentful, hostile to all but a default culture – is that the sort of country the rest of us want?

Against this backdrop, and at a time when a small but growing minority says you have to be white to be British, I have been thinking about minority belonging and attachment. I was born here, schooled here, have worked and paid taxes here, have served communities: but as the son of Windrush parents, how solid is my footing here? My late parents arrived in the 1950s and thought their status was secure. Then came the 1971 Immigration Act, which ripped up the rights they had as Commonwealth citizens and necessitated that they scramble to find the money to solidify their status under the government’s new arrangements. As a child I overheard the strained discussions about where the money was going to come from. The sound of shock and uncertainty.

We are settled, but never quite cosy. How can we be? Using the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002, the home secretary can pull the rug out from under a British citizen, without notification, if doing so meets their particular criteria of the public good. Earlier this year, research by the Runnymede Trust suggested that 9 million people – mainly those with dual nationalities – are vulnerable to losing the citizenship they thought was theirs, with minority citizens 12 times more vulnerable than white. This is us: you belong until, maybe, one day, you don’t.

Go home, Farage’s man said, and with that he echoed the exhortation of choice from nativist crowds outside asylum seeker hotels this summer. In the 50s and 60s, my parents’ generation of Windrush-era migrants used to hear that a lot too. But then, as now, it was a nonsense. Home to where? Where you have lived the longest? To your last port of call? To wherever will have you? We don’t know. That’s why politicians sought to shuttle folk off to Rwanda in the hope they would sort out the home/belonging conundrum themselves.

Where am I from? Where’s home if not here? Well certainly there is a quiet, leafy bit of Jamaica that my parents left in the 50s and returned to almost 40 years later. But this year, having paid the fee and explored my DNA, I’ve found there is a viable case that home could be a lot of places. Via Mum, according to the Ancestry results, there are traces from Benin and Togo, with a good bit of Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana, a smidgen of Nigeria, a little bit of Mali and a sliver of north-east Scotland. There’s even a drop of Iceland. Go figure.

From Dad, a bit of Benin and Togo, a bit more from Côte d’Ivoire, but most notably Nigeria. I am unsurprised. A Nigerian friend once glanced at a picture of my father and said, never mind Jamaica, “He’s from Nigeria: no question”. But here, again a mix: a chunk of Devon and Somerset, a little bit of Cameroon and Mali. Some Senegal, some Panama and Costa Rica. And then a trace of the Netherlands. Well, I do enjoy trips to Rotterdam.

I find all this energising, and certainly it challenges the idea that we are identity parcels labelled from one destination, ready to be returned to sender.

I am not a citizen of nowhere, as demonised by the populists, but through history, politics, cruelty and happenstance, a creature from almost everywhere. My guess is that many of you are the same – and that David Lammy is similar, too.

That’s the truth of it, and a conversation about home and belonging that starts from there would undoubtedly be more positive. Let’s have it.