Cyprus Mail
CM Regular ColumnistOpinion

Rishi Sunak a great disappointment on first day

suella braverman walks outside number 10 downing street in london
Suella Braverman as interior minister is a disastrous appointment Photo by Reuters

But it’s great Britain has appointed an Indian as PM

 

I laughed aloud when US President Joe Biden called Britain’s first Indian Prime Minister Rashid instead of Rishi Sunak. Harun Al Rashid was the Caliph in One Thousand And One Nights so in Britain and America his name is associated with exotic foreigners.

I laughed because Biden’s blunder reminded of the many times High Court judges used to get my name wrong.

“Yes Mr Rashid,” they would say in opening a case.

“It is Riza my lord.”

“I am so sorry.”

“What’s your best point in this case.”

An ominous question suggesting the case had not much to commend it; I would soldier on until the judge would make the same mistake again.

“But Mr Rashid if you are right it would drive a coach and horses through the law.”

“It is Riza my lord.”

“Of course it is, I do apologise.”

It happened many times and shows that English speakers are not good with foreign names but mean no harm. They are hopeless with Charalambos, which they invariably pronounce as Sharalambos.

Their inability to pronounce foreign names is because English is spoken so widely, native English speakers have no ear for the pronunciation of foreign names. Still I never understood why my name was so difficult to pronounce; it is relatively short with two distinct vowels and two distinct consonants both known to English ears.

And it is not just my name judges found difficult to pronounce. The names of cases in the law reports get similar treatment. I remember one case in particular called Muruganandarajah. At first the judge mumbled it and then gave up saying:

“Shall we refer to it as the case of M Mr Rashid?”

“It is Riza my lord, but yes M is fine.”

I could go on, but joking aside I have to say the appointment of Rishi Sunak was symbolically refreshing. Well done! Britain for appointing a person of Indian origin to be prime minister irrespective of his immigrant background.

Alas, we were not refreshed very long. His speech on taking office was lacklustre and if I were him, I would not go on about my love for the Conservative party after all the misery it has inflicted on people of late. It is the sort of thing people used to say about the Nazi party in Germany and the Communist party in the Soviet Union to keep the Gestapo and KGB at bay. You can love your spouse and children and your dog and even your country, but I am not sure a political party evokes feelings of love in its members.

The second mistake Sunak made on his first day in office was to claim that he would govern with integrity and then throw integrity out the window an hour later when he appointed Suella Braverman as minister of interior. She had resigned a week earlier for breaching the ministerial code. She is completely inexperienced, and her only dubious qualification is an overt right-wing extremism her white fellow-travellers in the Conservative party do not dare speak about in public. She told a meeting on the sidelines of the Conservative party conference earlier this month she had a dream; it was to see flights deporting refugees from Britain to Rwanda resume. Her other dream is to repeal European human rights law in Britain. As it was the European Court of Human Rights that blocked the removal of refugees to Rwanda her dream is to see the back of both.

It says a lot about how unprincipled the Conservative party has become that an upstart like Braverman has been appointed minister of interior notwithstanding her threat to repeal European human rights law in Britain.

The human rights convention was incorporated into British law by experienced legal heavyweights like Lord Irvine of Lairg, Tony Blair’s first Lord Chancellor, and developed and refined by Chief Justice and Senior Law Lord the late Lord Bingham of Cornhill. It is incredible that in 2022 human rights protection in UK is now in the hands of a legal moron like Braverman.

Reappointing her will come back to haunt Sunak not only because he undermined the ministerial code in offering her a government job a week after she resigned, but also for insulting the ethical values behind the code by appointing her to one of the great offices of state from which she resigned.

The fact that she accepted or even demanded the ministry of interior back suggests she has no remorse for breaking the ministerial code and, I suggest, would have no scruples about breaking it again.

It was a very bad judgement call by Sunak, but so was his decision not to attend the Climate Change Conference in Egypt next month. Liz Truss stupidly advised King Charles not to attend and now that the prime minister is not going, Britain will be unrepresented at the top table. If I were King Charles I would ask the new prime minister to recall the political advice of Truss on the grounds that Britain needs to be represented by her head of state; climate change has been of such great concern to him for so long, his absence would be keenly felt and damage Britain’s status in the world.

In any case the king is also head of state of small Commonwealth countries, mostly in the West Indies, that are very badly affected by climate change and may want him to attend independently of the wishes of the UK government.

Sunak did not start well and has been a great disappointment. He hopes to fix the economy and he will probably be much better than the hapless Liz Truss. However, my suspicion is that he has done a deal with Boris Johnson like the Blair-Brown pact at Granitas Restaurant in Islington.

Sunak is good at economics, so he steps in to stabilise the economy for now and makes way for Johnson come the general election. It makes sense because Johnson is useless in managing the economy but very good at winning elections.

 

 

Alper Ali Riza is a king’s counsel in the UK and a retired part time judge

 

 

 

 

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