Common sense dictates that politicians play Robin Hood by lacing stump speeches with promises to take money from the rich to give to the poor. This, even though everyone knows the policies they implement invariably make the rich richer and the poor poorer.
But wannabe prime minister Rishi Sunak seems utterly lacking in common sense.
Rishi Sunak has admitted taking money from deprived urban areas in order to give it to other parts of the country. The former chancellor, who is standing to be prime minister, made the claim last month while speaking to Conservative party members in Tunbridge Wells, Kent.
In footage obtained by the New Statesman, Sunak said: ‘I managed to start changing the funding formulas to make sure areas like this are getting the funding they deserved.’
(The Guardian, August 6, 2022)
He’s of Indian descent. But he was born and educated right there in England. This is why it’s as inexcusable as it is unforgivable that Sunak would turn the moral lesson of Robin Hood on its head like this…
First non-white prime minister?
One of the greatest moments in television for me came recently – as I was watching the June 30 edition of HARDTalk on the BBC. Host Stephen Sackur was grilling Singapore’s Home Affairs and Law Minister K. Shanmugam – who is of Indian heritage – about why his country’s 3 prime ministers have all been of Chinese heritage. Because Shanmugam could barely contain his indignation as he asked Sackur why Britain’s 55 prime ministers have all been white.
Except little did I know that, just one week later, Britain would give no less a non-white than Indian Sunak a chance to finally integrate its ranks of prime ministers.
Curiously, though, both Sunak and his rival Liz Truss appear to think they are competing to be the best Margaret Thatcher impersonator, not British prime minister. And, well, with Truss fashioning her campaign after Thatcher’s pioneering 1975 campaign – complete with channeling Maggie’s speeches and wearing similar clothes – Sunak stood no chance.
Sure enough, polls soon showed that conservative voters think Truss is doing a much better job of imitating Thatcher than he. And it appears Sunak has already conceded. Only that explains him complaining about the “forces that be” backing Truss.
Mind you, this is coming from an arriviste who infamously scoffed at the very notion of having working-class friends. Because the irony inherent in him of all people playing the race card is almost too rich for words…
A non-white more racist than any white
Indeed, then came word that this first non-white candidate for prime minister was proposing an immigration plan for England that would make even Viktor Orbán, the fascistic white nationalist leader of Hungary, blush.
Frankly, Sunak is coming across like little more than a British Uncle Tom. That, of course, is a self-hating non-white so desperate to please whites, he champions more racist causes than any self-respecting white ever would.
Surely only that explains him (openly) bragging about taking from the poor to give to the rich. And, trust me, this non-aristocrat who took such pride in proclaiming he has no working-class friends must have made aristocrats cringe with shame … for him when they heard that boast.