Disraeli believed in racial hierarchy and racial supremacy - a view which, while articulated early, was not atypical of Victorian intellectuals. As a believer in a natural aristocracy, however, he had to justify why he, Disraeli, of the Jewish race, was fit to be at the head of the British aristocracy. To square the circle, he bought into the idea of Sephardi supremacy, creating for himself a false pedigree of Spanish and Portuguese Jewish heritage and ignoring the more prominent Italian ancestry of his father's side of the family.
As a Sephardi, Disraeli believed himself racially fit for a position of leadership. Like Sidonia [the character in one of his novels], he believed, that while he was very English, his alien background gave him objectivity in leading Britain to greatness.
It is easy to dismiss the racial themes in Disraeli's fiction as nonsense. But in terms of self-fashioning, it was crucial, giving a sense of place, identity and mission to a young man who had collapsed in nervous exhaustion in his twenties.