Zibabwe Brexit - True Brit Part One

True Brit – Part One

Oxymoron - noun: oxymoron; plural noun: oxymorons

a figure of speech in which apparently contradictory terms appear in conjunction (e.g. faith unfaithful kept him falsely true ).

Yes I know, Zimbabwe, and the current political crisis there, appears to have no relationship or connection to Brexit. Wrong.

In my series, True Brit, I will examine the commonly held myths about the British and how these false myths affect almost every aspect of our lives in the early 21^st century.

Whilst it is easy to hypothesise about how Brexit happened, one thing is clear. The Brexit wing of the Conservative party has long held the belief that the UK remains, for practical purposes, in the pre-colonial past and therefore punches far higher in the world influence league than it deserves.

This is not entirely without justification. Don’t forget, the UK has a permanent seat on the UN Security Council, the UK is one of the world’s acknowledged nuclear powers and, crucially, today’s UK is the inheritor of “the sun never sets on the British Empire”.

Hence, the political situation in Zimbabwe has dominated news in the UK for the last few days. Memories of the Rhodesian UDI are still fresh in the minds of the majority of Conservative MP’s. And, the taste it leaves in their mouths is not a pleasant one. Outwardly half-accepting of Robert Mugabe, they have spent most of their political lives disparaging his regime – not without justification, but also revealing a deep-seated hostility to anyone with the temerity to challenge their world view of a Britain still basking in the wartime glory of Churchillian rhetoric.

The same scenario applies to Myanmar (Burma). The UK was the colonial power. Now news that the “Darling of the Media” Aung San Suu Kyi may be at least partly complicit in the genocide of displaced Rohingya Muslim minority has shaken the UK Foreign Office (so far as they are capable of being shaken).

Manila: Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi faced rising global pressure Tuesday to solve the crisis for her nation's displaced Rohingya Muslim minority, meeting the UN chief and America's top diplomat in the Philippines.

UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres told the Nobel laureate that hundreds of thousands of displaced Muslims who had fled to Bangladesh should be allowed to return to their homes in Myanmar.

"The Secretary-General highlighted that strengthened efforts to ensure humanitarian access, safe, dignified, voluntary and sustained returns, as well as true reconciliation between communities, would be essential," a UN statement said, summarising comments to Suu Kyi.

Guterres' comments came hours before Suu Kyi sat down with US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on the sidelines of the East Asia Summit in Manila.

Washington has been cautious in its statements on the situation in Rakhine, and has avoided outright criticism of Suu Kyi.

Supporters say she must navigate a path between outrage abroad and popular feeling in a majority Buddhist country where most people believe the Rohingya are interlopers.

At a photo opportunity at the top of her meeting with Tillerson, Suu Kyi ignored a journalist who asked if the Rohingya were citizens of Myanmar.

And in Zimbabwe the demise of Robert Mugabe is seen as a justification of the British position.  His overthrow is simply another example of True Brit.

In other news this week: the EU are planning closer co-operation in the area of defence. This has shaken the Little Englanders to the core. Nothing serves to enrage them more than what seems to be an attack on the military. Or, at least on the fantasy of the military. True Brit demands that the populace sees the Army, the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force as the nonpareil of national military might. There is, of course, little in the way of evidence to support this. (Only the British could celebrate a defeat (Dunkirk) with so much relish) The facts are: in WWI (which is the focus of Remembrance Day celebrations) it was the arrival of the American army which tipped the balance if favour of the allies, in WWII it was the Russian Army who defeated Hitler’s Third Reich and since then whilst the UK Forces have participated in numerous combat operations (Korea, The Falklands Campaign, Bosnia, Desert Storm) in each case they played a subordinate role.

If we then add the Brexit debacle into the mix, things rapidly approach the unreasonable. No other fiasco exhibits the core of True Brit like Brexit. It is the core. In fact, Brexit itself is an oxymoron. Britain is not going to leave the EU – at least not in the sense that the voters think they voted for. As the Brexit Secretary, David Davis, tries to spread the gloss on an untenable set of circumstances, he only highlights the unsolvable nature of the problems. I particularly liked the comment on the news today that for the first time in over 700 years the Irish have the UK over a barrel. Neither the Conservative and Unionist Party nor the Irish government will countenance a hard border between Eire and Northern Ireland. The EU will not countenance no border at all. The whole thing rhymes with clucking bell.

Watch this space – things can only get worse.