Columns

In a video clip, Boris Johnson delivered a special message to Sri Lanka Tamils

As the British election earlier this month was coming to a head, the incumbent Prime Minister Boris Johnson did what he does best — break into his racist and discriminatory lingo and muddy the political waters.

This is nothing new for a man who has been doing this for years, from way back when he was a journalist for the Daily Telegraph and later as editor of the Spectator.

It must have been two decades or so ago that as editor of the Spectator his defence of a Greek journalist who wrote his racist and often discriminatory columns under the pen name “Taki”.

It was just the other day that Johnson in his column in the Daily Telegraph called Muslim women dressed in the niqab as “letterboxes” and looking like “bank robbers”.

During the recent election campaign Johnson was accused of ‘revolting, xenophobic’ and racist dog whistling over comments he made about EU citizens living in the UK.

Boris Johnson is reported to have said while on the campaign trail that EU migrants have been able to “treat the UK as if it’s part of their own country” for far too long.

One person tweeted: “This is pure hard-right Trumpism and moderate Tories (if there are any left) shouldn’t touch it with a bargepole”.

This unnamed writer was not far wrong. He has become a lapdog of that other racist leader on the other side of the Atlantic whose populist nationalism Johnson is trying to embrace to build an image of a true English nationalist.

But then Johnson works in curious. With the voting almost on us Johnson was present in a video in which he praised the Tamil community for the great contributions they had made to British society, to the NHS, to entrepreneurship, to education etc.

There is no denying that the Tamil community has contributed in various ways. But then the Sri Lankan community has done so — Sinhala, Muslim and Burgher ethnic groups which are an intrinsic part of the Sri Lankan diaspora in the UK.

Is Johnson so blind and dumb that he is not aware of this? Of course not! He is surely aware that there is an “official affiliate” recognised and accepted by the Conservative Party called Conservative Friends of Sri Lanka.

This organisation, as it says, consists of members of all of Sri Lanka’s ethnic groups. There is also a separate affiliate consisting of British Tamils.

Despite the fact that the Conservative Friends of Sri Lanka is made of members of all ethnic groups unlike the British Tamils affiliate, Boris Johnson sought to thank only those of one community – Tamil — instead of the larger and more inclusive Sri Lanka diaspora.

If Johnson had any understanding of Britain’s migrant communities including those who have sort asylum in this country, he would know the contribution made to British society by the Sri Lanka diaspora.

But then we know that he has an aversion for migrants as he has shown in his writings and utterances. It is not surprising then that he appointed Priti Patel as Home Secretary for she seems to share Johnson’s feelings about migrants, though her own parents were migrants of Indian origin from Uganda.

If Patel’s policy of stopping free movement “once and for all” was in existence at the time her parents turned up in the UK she would probably have been born in Uganda.

Johnson speaks in that video referred to as though only ethnic Tamils from Sri Lanka have made contributions to the functioning of the NHS. If that was not what he meant then he could have used the appellation “Sri Lankan” instead of addressing only the Tamil community when many in the Sri Lankan community have contributed to and added to make pluralist Britain even richer culturally, socially and economically.

Nearly 20 years ago, the UK banned a group called the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) as a foreign terrorist organisation, but it has functioned openly with British MPs and politicians participating in its activities despite the proscription.

One cannot be sure whether Prime Minister Johnson included members of this organisation too when he lavished praise on this community while ignoring other Sri Lankan communities that have lived and worked here without being so much of a burden on the British tax payers as others from Sri Lanka have been.

If Mr Johnson talks of contributions made by one section of the Sri Lankan diaspora, he has been one- sided as he is often prone to be in his discourse.

After all, he cannot be ignorant of the fact that some others from the same ethnic group have been a drain on the British economy and a social problem for Britain.

Defending Johnson’s video address to the Tamil community beginning with the greeting “vanakkam”, I was told that he was making an 11th hour appeal to the Tamils to win their votes.

That seems to me to be a rather strange way of winning votes. The video was in English. It was going what is now commonly called “viral” as though it was part of a dengue epidemic.

Surely such a one-sided appeal which makes the Tamil voter special would have antagonised others of the Sri Lankan diaspora who have also contributed much to British institutions such as the NHS and to academic life. How would they who have contributed as much to British society if not more, treat the condescension with which their contributions are treated by the British prime minister?

Or is Johnson avoiding any mention of them because he has taken for granted that other ethnic groups in the Sri Lankan diaspora would vote for the Conservatives under Johnson who had shown scant disregard for the law as he did in the last days of the former parliament?

Few are aware that Johnson’s racist reference to Muslim women dressed in the niqab as “letter boxes” and “bank robbers”, resulted a week later in Islamophobic incidents rising by 375 per cent according to research studies.

This is the kind of prime minister that the British public has overwhelmingly elected for the next five years at least, mostly because of the sheer mess the Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn made in the last couple of years.

With the substantial majority he now has in parliament Boris Johnson is capable of pushing through obnoxious and dangerous legislation. He is unreliable because he is untrustworthy with regard to keeping promises.

Only time will show whether all the prosperity that Johnson said Brexit will bring is more of the usual Johnsonian bluster. He dodged being interviewed on BBC by presenter Andrew Neil when all other party leaders did because he feared that his bluster and his empty promises would be exposed for what they are.

It was a former British prime minister Benjamin Disraeli who reportedly said there are three kinds of lies — lies, damned lies and statistics. Replace the last word with two others — “Johnsonian utterances”– to update the Disraeli saying made more famous by Mark Twain and we would see a new UK presided over by a pompous prime minister.