Question Time continues to give airtime to the far right, this week hosting Konstantin Kisin, a Russian commentator and podcaster, for the second time.
His fellow panellist, Scotland secretary Douglas Alexander, brought up an episode of Kisin’s Triggernometry podcast recorded last year, in which the guest, Times columnist Fraser Nelson, spoke about his seemingly uncontroversial view that former PM Rishi Sunak is English.
“When Fraser Nelson put it to you that Rishi Sunak is absolutely English, what did you reply?, he asked. “I said he was British,” said Kisin.
“No, you said, ‘he’s a brown Hindu, how is he English?’” responded Alexander.
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Kisin continued to insist he’d said nothing of the sort. “I said he was British,” he said. “I said he was British.”
So what did Kisin actually say on the Triggernometry episode of February 14, 2025, awkwardly still available, as they say, wherever you get your podcasts, after guest Nelson said: “I would say Rishi Sunak is as English as Tizer and y-fronts, right? He is absolutely English. He was born and bred here and I wouldn’t say that the colour of his skin makes him any less.”
What Kisin said was: “He’s a brown Hindu. How is he English? So, by being born here you become English in your opinion?.”
Kisin has since doubled down, writing on, inevitably, X that Alexander was “lying” and peddling “cheap nonsense” when he claimed that Kisin had said things he had provably said on his own podcast.
It’s strange that Kisin is so touchy about it. When he first made the comments last February, inciting a micro-fury on social media, he fully leant into it, posting a seven-minute video on YouTube repeating his claims the former PM couldn’t be English under the considered and thoughtful title ‘’Oh No, I Did a Racism”’.
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