Eric Sukumaran is the Conservative Party candidate for the Southgate and Wood Green parliamentary constituency in London. He is the U.K.-born son of immigrants from Kerala. Mr. Sukumaran spent holidays, over three decades, in Kerala, and speaks Malayalam.
Why the Conservative Party? And why now, when it’s potentially facing a defeat of historic proportions?
Well, I think the second one first, I don’t think your principles should be decided on whether the party is going to win or lose. I’m a conservative because I’m a conservative and I’m not chasing the party that’s up or the party that’s down. I take this long view on history that these things are cyclical, regardless.
Why am I a conservative? I’m a conservative because we’re the one party that really values individual freedom over the collectivist approach of the left. I’m pro-business, pro low-tax. I’m also pro individual responsibility and for those who can, to work hard and build things themselves, which, coming from an immigrant family, means a lot to me here.
Pro low tax: as you know, that’s currently not the situation with the Conservative Party, although, of course it’s part of the party brand. The tax burden has been the highest it has been in decades. How do you reconcile that?
We shouldn’t forget that we were hit by a nationwide emergency. Right? And we paid for that with enormous amount of borrowing to be able to pay for everyone’s salary. The government spent something like £400 billion shepherding the economy through that crisis, providing vaccines for everybody. That has to be paid for. Look, I’m not like a pie-in-the-sky guy who says, “Low taxes all the time”. But before that happened, we had a reasonably low tax base. We had cut the 45% rate in tax down to 40% and actually raised the tax take at the same time doing that. And if you look now we’ve started cutting National Insurance and we have an ambition of abolishing National Insurance and self-employed people. So inflation is now back down to 2.0% which will then also allow us to cut taxes because while inflation was at 11%, if we had cut taxes, we would have just gotten more inflation.
So, there’s also an economically responsible approach that we have to take to these things. Our instinct is to cut taxes whenever possible. Now with inflation, where it is , back down to exactly on our Bank of England target of 2.0%, it opens up — for the Conservatives anyway — the ability to cut taxes.
When did this interest in politics start and when did you join the Conservative Party?
My interest in politics is from a very, very young age. I have had political ambitions for a very long time. With the exception of when I worked on Boris Johnson’s re-election campaign for Mayor [of London] in 2012, my judgement has been to enter politics a slight bit later on in life, because I think that we should return to a time when our politicians actually had other careers under their belts first, before entering politics. I think that the more people who have experienced living outside of politics, coming into politics means that you bring fresh ideas, fresh perspectives. So I’ve decided to take the plunge. Now I think I’ve built up a pretty strong base of experiences that I think will be additive to Parliament, whenever I enter it.
The Conservative manifesto promises an annual cap on immigration. You come from an immigrant family. How do you reconcile these two aspects?
I find this thing very curious. Just because somebody immigrated here, or somebody’s family immigrated here, that they have to slavishly be [for] open borders. We aren’t defined by the fact that we happened to immigrate here, right? We have a lot of other concerns. And also, you know, at the end of the day…
Well, if there were closed borders, your family would not have been able to come here…
Right. But at the time this country needed the kind of workers that my grandfather was. There was an enormous skill shortage. We don’t have the same kind of skills shortage and all we’re asking is actually that especially if you come here to study for a professional degree, that you get a professional job with it that pays a minimum of £35,000. These are reasonable things. Times change, right? If it was 200 years ago, or in 200 years time, would you expect me to say, “Oh, my family came over 200 years ago, whatever the policy was then, that should be [the policy] now.”
We’re looking for productive members of our society. We’re not anti-immigration, we’re just anti uncontrolled immigration.
I refuse to be tied to that kind of thinking. We have to focus on the here and now. And the reality is of the pressures that are put on our housing, on our health service, on our education system. You know, those things shouldn’t be denied.
Within the Conservative Party, there are differences on the extent to which immigration should be restricted. For example, the Migration Advisory Committee had advised that the post-study work visa remain in place. Some people (e.g., Jeremy Hunt, David Cameron) were more opposed to tampering with it than others. Also, in terms of healthcare workers no longer being able to bring their spouses to the U.K., where do you stand in this debate?
Our healthcare workers are on a protected list, we need them. The country reserves the right to put any occupation that it needs on that protected list. And I support that. In terms of bringing your family over, I am married to an American. I do think personally that British citizens have a right to marry whoever they want and bring over a spouse. Going beyond that, I think is not potentially productive. I think it would be very hypocritical for me to say you can’t bring a spouse over – I brought a spouse over. We advertise the jobs that we need, we bring people over for the jobs that we need, and if you are married, you deserve to live with your husband or wife.
So, middle of the road, I would say, on that. I’m not a super hardliner who says you can’t bring anyone. I think that’s not particularly practical. And not to mention, you’re not going to get people coming over if you’re going to say this.
What are some of the big issues that you’re dealing with in your constituency or that you hope to address if you’re elected?
The main one is, a lot of constituents are very concerned about this uncontrolled greenbelt development that’s happening in the north of the constituency. So there are 3700 homes planned for this very small area in the north of the constituency. In that ward, there are 10,000 people, and this particular development would be a further 10,000 people. So, double the population of that ward without providing any of the extra services or infrastructure to be able to cope with that. At the moment, it has been delayed by the government, and it’s something that I would also fight to prevent, and instead be replacing that with brownfield development in urban areas that would actually be affordable for young people to get on to the housing ladder.
Secondly, the level of crime in London is rising. Under Labour’s Sadiq Khan [ Mayor of London], the Metropolitan Police was the only police force in the country to miss their recruitment targets to increase the police officers on the streets. That’s something that I’d be want to be pushing.
I work in business as well. Alongside the World Bank, I run my own sort of renewable energy business and I would want to support the growth of local businesses which are very, very active in Southgate and Wood Green.
Both, the Conservatives and Labour want to see a trade deal completed with India. And they’re both bullish on the relationship with India. What is your vision for the UK-India relationship over the next five years?
I think it’s extremely important to build a stable and long term, mutually beneficial relationship with India. The Indian economy is now a little bit bigger than ours. So we have economies of equivalent size, obviously population [size] is very different. I think there’s a lot for us to gain from each other. There’s already a really good working base there of relations between people of Indian origin in the UK and people in India. So I think a lot of the bones are there for a really fantastic relationship to be built based on mutual benefit and trade. I hope that whoever is in government recognises that and keeps pushing for it.