LONDON (TIP): Britain’s first Indian-origin Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has defended the UK’s record on race amid a brewing row over controversial remarks by a columnist attacking Prince Harry’s wife Meghan Markle, who is of African-American heritage.
Sunak was addressing questions posed by reporters during a visit to the Latvian capital of Riga on Monday, December 19, when he spoke out against racism and highlighted his own heritage as carrying some weight on the subject.
“I absolutely don’t believe that Britain is a racist country. And I’d hope that as our nation’s first British Asian Prime Minister when I say that it carries some weight,” he told reporters.
“You know, I’m really proud of our country, its culture, its resilience, its beauty. And actually, it’s an enormous privilege to champion Britain and indeed, its institutions like the monarchy when I’m out and about on the world stage as I am here today,” said the UK-born politician, who has his family roots in Punjab.
Sunak was reacting to an ongoing row over former television presenter and columnist Jeremy Clarkson writing in ‘The Sun’ about loathing Meghan Markle, the Duchess of Sussex, “on a cellular level”, in the wake of the controversial ‘Harry and Meghan’ documentary being aired on Netflix recently.
Clarkson’s column received over 6,000 complaints to the Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO), resulting in an apology from the writer and the newspaper removing the column from its website. “For everyone in public life, language matters,” said Sunak, when asked about the furor. Meanwhile, more than 60 cross-party British MPs have written to the editor of ‘The Sun’, Victoria Newton, to demand action be taken against Clarkson.
In a letter, they said Meghan Markle had received credible threats to her life and that columns such as Clarkson’s contributed to an “unacceptable climate of hatred and violence”.
The letter, coordinated by the Conservative Party Chair of the Women and Equalities Select Committee in the House of Commons, Caroline Nokes, was signed by fellow Tory MPs as well as Opposition MPs from Labour, Lib Dem, Green and SNP.
“We cannot allow this type of behavior to go unchecked any longer. We welcome the Sun’s retraction of the article and we now demand action is taken against Mr. Clarkson and an unreserved apology to Ms Markle immediately,” they write.
There is nothing in Rishi Sunak’s elevation to celebrate for Indians
“The takeaway from the hullabaloo over the elevation of a beef-eating-yet-cow-worshipping opportunist as the new PM of Britain is that there is nothing to celebrate in it for Indians. In fact, if Sunak is a Churchill worshipper, like most other Tories, India has a lot to be worried about while dealing with a seemingly brown person on the other side of the table. The contempt of the British government — which included Sunak — for Indian territorial integrity was in full display last year when it hosted the Khalistan referendum in London.”
“With the Kamala Harris example, it should have by now become clear to Indian politicians that a person of Indian origin gaining political office abroad is often more of a liability than an advantage to further India’s interests in that country. A politician by definition is at the mercy of his or her constituents, colleagues, co-conspirators and the media. So, even a hint of a lack of loyalty to the local mores can finish off a career. No wonder the US has still not elected a President or a Vice-President from a minority religious group or even an atheist; all of them since 1789 seem to have got sworn into office with a hand on the Bible.”
By Rajesh Ramachandran
At closer inspection, all the panegyrics – mother of all parliaments, the womb of democracy, the Westminster Model – ring ridiculously hollow. Sure, no one ever told the British king that his democracy was showing. It was only when Rishi Sunak was appointed (or selected) to the Prime Minister’s office did it occur to the world that the mother of all parliaments had all along let only White children hold her hand. The celebrated Westminster Model was all about protecting White privilege, and yet, the knaves of the old colonies were copying it, again, to preserve White privilege, for this model afforded the old master the occasion to tinker with newly-freed slaves.
An Indian-origin person gaining political office abroad is more of a liability than an advantage to further India’s interests. It is indeed a matter of great shame that an institution that traces its history back to the 13th century never allowed a person from a minority community to head the house. So, all the talk of diversity, often funded by British NGOs, should now start by addressing why it took Britain so long to have diversity at 10 Downing Street. And that question leads to another, more pertinent one: Why now? Why should a nation that prides itself on its customs, traditions, wigs and gowns suddenly abandon it all for a brown man professing a “beastly religion”? The answer could only be that it is in the British interest to have Sunak as Prime Minister. Only those who have a good ear to the London ground can tell us exactly what particular interests Sunak serves.
But there is no doubt whatsoever that he has been chosen to serve the interests of the White privilege or the western consensus. After becoming the Prime Minister, Sunak has pressed all the right buttons. He pumped up Zelenskyy, snubbing Putin, promised to counter China’s ‘malign influence’ and appointed an anti-immigration Home Secretary. So, it remains a mystery why it should be Sunak and not another White MP. Does this appointment have anything to do with a course correction in the British or western perspective over their loosening grip over India?
The fear of the rise of China has obviously restricted the movement of the instruments of global finance capital headquartered in London, and they would obviously have far fewer takers in an emasculated Europe, particularly after Brexit. In that context, the best possible market to make money is the poorly regulated yet bottomless Indian market. Despite demonetization devastating the informal sector and the Covid lockdown inflicting untold pain on the poor, the Indian market is bouncing back like a ping-pong ball. With almost every other slightly upper-middle-class Indian family sending its wards to the West for higher studies, it would seem as if middle India on an average has a disposable income of about half-a-crore rupees. So, it makes sense for a nation of shopkeepers to have a brown man to sell its wares.
The takeaway from the hullabaloo over the elevation of a beef-eating-yet-cow-worshipping opportunist as the new PM of Britain is that there is nothing to celebrate in it for Indians. In fact, if Sunak is a Churchill worshipper, like most other Tories, India has a lot to be worried about while dealing with a seemingly brown person on the other side of the table. The contempt of the British government — which included Sunak — for Indian territorial integrity was in full display last year when it hosted the Khalistan referendum in London.
Interestingly, even the grandsons of old colonial collaborators — like the one who gave a saropa to General Dyer or the false witness in the Bhagat Singh trial — are still feted by the British establishment. Till recently, a letter from one of these old collaborators’ grandsons could fetch an asylum visa for a regular immigrant to the UK or Canada.
This week marks 75 years of the first war against India by Pakistan. According to Mountbatten’s ADC Narendra Sarila, it was predicted by General Leslie Hollis of Churchill’s war cabinet a good five months earlier, in May 1947. Well, it could not have been predicted without the idea having been conceived by the same group that wanted Kashmir to accede to Pakistan against the wishes of its people. The burden of history is so strong that it is difficult to expect anything dramatically positive from a government led by a party that unapologetically created circumstances for the Bengal famine that killed three million people — half the number of those dead in the Jewish holocaust. While dealing with the brown people on the other side of the table, Indian politicians must remind their counterparts that they should lock up and deport overstaying Indian visa violators, but at the same time they should understand that their asylum policy has been exposed as a means to strengthen religious secessionism in India. Also, Britain should stop being a safe haven for Indian fugitives. Let businessmen buy residencies in the UK, but not with the aim of finding a hiding place to enjoy the fruits of bank defaults and frauds.
With the Kamala Harris example, it should have by now become clear to Indian politicians that a person of Indian origin gaining political office abroad is often more of a liability than an advantage to further India’s interests in that country. A politician by definition is at the mercy of his or her constituents, colleagues, co-conspirators and the media. So, even a hint of a lack of loyalty to the local mores can finish off a career. No wonder the US has still not elected a President or a Vice-President from a minority religious group or even an atheist; all of them since 1789 seem to have got sworn into office with a hand on the Bible.
India, on the contrary, has been truly democratic and inclusive till, of course, the BJP decided not to have Muslim ministers in the Union Cabinet. Just 20 years after Partition, which created a separate nation for Muslims, India had a Muslim President. According to the Westminster model, this would be like asking King Charles to convert!
LONDON (TIP): Rishi Sunak on Wednesday clinched his place for the final leg of the race to succeed Boris Johnson and will go head-to-head with Foreign Secretary Liz Truss as one of two finalists to take charge as Conservative Party leader and British Prime Minister.Sunak won the fifth and final voting round of Tory MPs with a resounding 137 votes, while second-placed Truss won the support of 113 MPs. Trade Minister Penny Mordaunt was knocked out of the race after coming in third with 105 votes. Alleging rigging, a Tory MP says, “There is no way Truss picked up 15 votes from Tom Tugendhat. Someone is moving votes around.” David Davis claims the Sunak camp has reallocated votes from Tugendhat to Truss to stop the trade minister reaching the final. The 42-year-old British Indian former Chancellor, who has topped every voting round so far, added 19 votes to his Tuesday tally of 118 and comfortably crossed the 120 MPs mark seen as the threshold to confirm a place in the final showdown. Sunak and Truss are now set for their first head-on clash in a live televised debate scheduled on the BBC for Monday.
Earlier, outgoing PM Johnson used his last Prime Minister’s Questions (PMQs) in the House of Commons to bid farewell to the top job with the Spanish phrase “hasta la vista, baby”. In his final speech, he had words of advice for his successor: “Stay close to the Americans, stick up for the Ukrainians, stick up for freedom and democracy everywhere,” he said. Sunak’s popularity within the Conservative parliamentary party does not seem to chime with the views of the wider membership base, which has shown favor towards his leading opponents. The most recent YouGov survey of 725 Conservative Party members over Monday and Tuesday showed Truss would beat Sunak by 54 per cent to 35 per cent, and Mordaunt would also beat him 51 per cent to 37 per cent. There is also some concern that Sunak’s prospect to replace Johnson could be hit by Conservative Campaign Headquarters’ decision to send out those ballot papers early next month before the bulk of the campaign hustings have been held. The focus will now shift towards those hustings as both candidates campaign to woo the Tory voters to cast those ballots in their favor.
Given the rapid spread of COVID-19 in the UK, where the death toll has crossed 6,000, and its impact on frontline ministers, questions around leadership have been increasingly doing the rounds
LONDON (TIP): The UK’s Indian-origin finance minister, Rishi Sunak, is next in line to deputize for British Prime Minister Boris Johnson while he is in hospital with coronavirus and in case UK Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab is unable to carry on amid the pandemic, Downing Street has said. Sunak, who has been leading the UK government’s economic response during the COVID-19 lockdown as the Chancellor of the Exchequer, will automatically step in as part of an established order of precedence in the UK – which does not have a written constitution.
“There is an established order of precedence. The Prime Minister has appointed the Foreign Secretary [Raab] as his First Secretary of State. In line with the order of precedence, the Chancellor [Sunak] would follow from the Foreign Secretary,” Johnson’s spokesperson at Downing Street told reporters in response to a question about the chain of command at the top of the British government.
Given the rapid spread of COVID-19 in the UK, where the death toll has crossed 6,000, and its impact on frontline ministers, questions around leadership have been increasingly doing the rounds.
Sunak, 39, has had to table his maiden Budget as well as a series of mini budgets over the past few weeks to try and address the crisis faced by UK businesses as a result of the lockdown.
Johnson, 55, is said to be stable and responding to treatment after he was admitted to St. Thomas’ Hospital in London with persistent coronavirus symptoms and later moved to its intensive care unit (ICU) to be close to a ventilator.
“The Prime Minister’s condition is stable and he remains in intensive care for close monitoring. He is in good spirits,” a Downing Street spokesperson said earlier on Wednesday.
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