Welcome to Uciss Itel.

My name is Sarah Hall and I'm a deputy director at UK Interchanging Europe.

I'm delighted to be joining Anand in hosting some of our upcoming episodes of Ucass I tell, starting with today's conversation with Sunder Kat Waller, Director of British Future.

I really hope you enjoy it.

Thank you. Director of British Future. I really hope you enjoy it. So today I'm really happy to welcome Sunder Kat Waller to the U-Kis-I-Tel podcast.

Sunder, as I'm sure many listeners will know, is the Director of British Future,

a think tank based in London that seeks to understand public attitudes in the area of

integration, immigration, identity and race to foster a more inclusive Britain.

Sunder previously worked at the Observer and as a general secretary of the Fabian Society. He established British future as a non-partisan think tank

that engages across the political spectrum to understand what he terms the anxious middle,

referring to those who are neither wholly pro

nor anti-immigration. And on that theme, Sunder has just written a book, How to Be a Patriot,

why love of country can end our very British culture war. So Sunder, could you start by just

giving us an idea of some of the main arguments that you make in that book?

Yes, it's a very personal book because it's about me, my understanding of identity, how that was shaped by my own background, and how that influences the approach I take to what are quite a set of contested and

polarised issues about identity in Britain. Today, I was born British to parents who came to this

country from India and from Ireland and met through the National Health Service. And so I grew up

sort of mixed ethnic heritage,

Irish Catholic really because my mum's faith was stronger than my dad's Hindu faith.

And in the mid-70s when I'm born, went to school in the 1980s, went to university in the 1990s,

and felt pretty

confident, I think, that Britain was opening up for people like me, that Britain was having

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