British politricks
Asnap general election has been sprung on the long-suffering British public next week due to the sheer ineptness of their politicians to exit the European Union with an acceptable deal. They who ditched the Commonwealth to seek better prospects with Europe are crawling back to the group of former colonies of their Empire forgetting these are independent and sovereign states now. No longer does Britain rule the waves, nor can it waive the rules.
If one thought this was an election about Brexit and nothing else, it is not so. In the process of its campaign, desperate “toffs” (right-wing Conservative Party) and the “working class” (leftwing Labour Party) are slavishly at the feet of every vote available, the sizable numbers of voters of Sri Lankan origin among them. The Liberal Democrats have also jumped into the bandwagon and the Far Right is not worth talking about.
The Conservative Party is under fire for its Islamophobia and the Labour Party for its anti-Semitism, but they don’t see the mote in their own eye.
The Labour Shadow Chancellor John McDonald takes the cake for his buffoonery and/or in causing violence to the Queen’s English when he speaks of “genocide” in Sri Lanka. For someone who says his hobby is “fermenting the overthrow of capitalism”, he seems to ferment trouble outside Britain as well. He talks from a handout given to him of a “homeland” in Sri Lanka. As former prime minister Dudley Senanayake would say; “Parliamentary language prohibits us from saying what he’s talking through”.
There’s no immediate concern, however. The Labour Party is in for a thrashing at next week’s elections, if the pollsters are accurate. The Conservatives have won even the blue collar vote base with what has now become a global phenomenon -- nationalism. Their motto is ‘For Britain and the ordinary man’.
Their election manifesto has a reference to Sri Lanka and a good sub-editor or proof reader would have spotted that Sri Lanka and Cyprus were unintentionally lumped together with their otherwise praiseworthy support for the “two state” policy of Palestine. This has given rise to genuine concern which has now been clarified that it applies only to the West Asian issue.
It is a welcome sign that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (now renamed Foreign Relations) is taking a more pro-active role in challenging double standards either in the case of UN peacekeeping operations or with British politicians treating Sri Lanka like a political football.
British politicians do not realise that others see their actions as double standards.
Just this week, the Westminster Magistrates Court’s Chief Magistrate found the former Military Attaché at the Sri Lanka High Commission in London guilty of making a “Disreputable act for a senior military officer”. It ignored his diplomatic status and it is worth noting that within the last few weeks their government has been accused of discharging military officers found guilty of murdering innocent children in Afghanistan and just last week their cops were videoed on the London Bridge by a passer-by shooting a “terrorist” who had been disarmed and subdued, as if in a firing squad.
Mauritius has labelled Britain “an illegal colonial occupier” and the United Nations has set a deadline for Britain to leave Chagos Islands, which it is refusing to do.
Though banned in the UK as a terrorist group, LTTE flags were waved in front of the London court this week thumping British law enforcement and the judiciary in the nose. No wonder Britain is being called a state that harbours terrorists. It seems one country’s terrorist group is another country’s vote bank.