Nesrine Malik

Nesrine Malik has, with restrained but powerful prose, as well as on the ground reporting, captured the racial and class inflected tensions that have stalked British politics and society over the past year. In doing so, she offers not only a way forward out of social discord, but a clear eyed assessment of how that discord comes about. Malik informs her commentary with on the ground reporting and a wide historical lens, as she did when she visited Rishi Sunak's parents' birthplace of Kenya, and gave an illuminating and rare explanation of how immigration patterns in the UK have informed British politics. In her faith in the fundamental harmonious nature of the country and how it can be harnessed, Malik delivered a rousing message of hope in her columns where she highlights why that potential continues to be unrealised, and how it can be nurtured.

As an Arabic speaker who grew up in the Middle East and North Africa, Malik's foreign policy analysis and reporting on the war in Gaza has been unmatched by others in the British press. She is the only mainstream columnist who reported from ‘Israel, Jerusalem and the West Bank’ as Israel and Iran exchanged missile strikes, and delivered to readers an eye witness report that was based on facts and not polemic. Malik often bravely breaks with such limited conventional wisdom, as she did when she questioned the value of diversity initiatives following the Black Lives Matter movement, offering a sobering credible analysis of how identity politics needs to be about more than representation.