EDITORIAL COMMENT: We’re all vulnerable to life’s dangers Theresa May

On June 23, Britain commemorates the historic Brexit vote. On introspection, we ask what exactly they will be celebrating.

Instead of moving forward, demonstrating independence from the European Union and the single market, it’s as if the UK is stuck. This has exposed the Empire.

British Prime Minister Theresa May’s vulnerability in the unfolding power struggle, coupled with tragedies that continue to befall the UK, have left her in a weak situation. Although she has remained defiant after her party lost the majority in parliament in recent elections, and has been making frantic efforts to form a minority government, with a little-known political party, we ask, for how long?

May told her Conservative party colleagues, “I got us into this mess, and I’m going to get us out.” What magic wand will she wave considering that the wind continues to blow against her?

Unless of course she wants to play out what New Zealand fiction author Bernard Beckett says: “Human spirit is the ability to face the uncertainty of the future with curiosity and optimism. It is the belief that problems can be solved, differences resolved. “It is a type of confidence. And it is fragile. It can be blackened by fear and superstition,” but the truth is that she is walking on thin ice.

She now seems to convene emergency committee meetings (code-named Cobra) weekly, instead of providing broad-based leadership. In the past few weeks, Britain has faced at least three high profile terrorist attacks where dozens have been killed, and dozens more injured.

The UK is reeling under another tragedy, where dozens of lives have been lost. Surprisingly, it conducted elections even under such circumstances that would have compromised the freeness and fairness of the election. If what is currently taking place in the UK were to happen in any African country, we would have heard threats being made. They would have de-legitimised the results.

We are victims of their double standards and bullying tactics. The same is happening in South Africa. Recently, they wanted Zimbabwe to admit that it is a fragile state, and it did not also take long for the big three credit rating agencies (Standard & Poor, Fitch and Moody’s), to downgrade South Africa to junk status. But they are not doing the same to Britain whose fragility is there for all to see. There are political risks arising from the UK’s current state in both governance and security issues.

However, the inferno that killed several people in a London block of flats just after midnight on Tuesday is one of Theresa May’s woes. It is a tragedy that demands more answers than the questions being raised.

When it was evident that many people perished in the inferno, it was ridiculous that the UK media since Wednesday continued to give small figures of the affected, making it look like the flat was deserted, when it had more than 100 families, sleeping. You did not have to be a rocket scientist to know that the time of incident and the raging flames claimed lots of lives than the BBC, Sky News and CNN were reporting. A Daily Mail report said yesterday, “Rescuers say finding a survivor in the inferno tower would be a ‘miracle’”.

The tragedy exposed the Empire’s class system, revealing that the much-touted multi-cultural and diverse policies are nothing, but racist. We hear that these council flats house the poorest of the poor in Britain, but what is surprising from the TV footage is that the poor people killed in that inferno were likely to be black and/or Asian.

It also exposed their religion, since a number of people that spoke and/or are looking for missing family members and friends are from the Islamic religion.

How does the UK government explain this anomaly, in view of the fact that these flats are built adjacent to an area where the rich and powerful live? How does Sadiq Khan, the Mayor of London, who is also an Asian explain such an immigrant housing policy?

However, like any monumental tragedy, the London fire reawakened the vulnerability to life’s dangers, inherent in us all.

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