Where has the truth gone?

There were two remarkable things about Emma Raducanu’s wonderful win at the US open last week. The first was the win itself. The second was the reaction to it. For the fact that Raducanu happens to be of Romanian-Chinese descent and was born in Canada meant that her triumph was immediately spun through the same political cycle as everything else.

Mayor of London Sadiq Khan proclaimed that the star’s story is ‘London’s story’ and showed the virtue of ‘diversity’. Other politicians and hacks joined him. A columnist from the Times declared that Raducanu’s victory showed that ‘immigration enriches us, and always has done’, while an ITV presenter said the win was a victory against ‘the haters’, as though there were well-known anti-tennis-prodigy forces out there. This diversity, right here, is ‘the Britain we love’, he said. ‘Quite right,’ chimed in the Conservative MP Steve Baker.

By that logic these people ought to have been thrilled at the news from Dover last week, where almost 1,000 future winners of the US Open crossed the Channel in a single day.