Always On The Outside, Looking In…

Oh, dear old Yasmin. No sooner does she do something amazing, she’s back a few days later doing something more typical:

Week in, week out, plain-speaking natives out there notify me that I will always be an unwelcome alien, never properly British. They are right. We immigrants are destined to be insider-outsiders.

Well, that’s a cheery thought. And clearly, it goes for all immigrants, everywhere.

Because, as far as Yaz is concerned, all immigrants are the same, clearly…

The hope is that our children will belong – but their birthright too is often contested. It's all very exhausting and hurtful, yet there are advantages too. Incomers can never share the smug patriotism of the true-born.

Are you sure?

Some of Britain's achievements are awesome…

Only some?

… especially for those of us who fled autocratic nations run by bandits. But tyrannies make you sceptical and less gullible than those who take democracy for granted. You mistrust the powerful, question their versions of history and their motives, messages and policies.

And bang on and on and on and on about racism and make a tidy living from it. It’s a hard life…

The late Anthony Sampson, an exceptionally astute writer on the workings of the British state, wrote in 2004: "The British political establishment has always tended towards a single social plateau firmly based in London... The old pattern keeps reasserting itself with a different cast, still forming a narrow circle at the top."

This is the circle that tells us what to think and believe. They determine judgements, and even the language we may use. If Britons could free their minds and tongues they would see a much more disturbing picture of their beloved land than they ever allow themselves to.

Aren’t you one of the progressive figures who has spent the last 20 years agitating for Britons to hold their tongues and keep their thoughts to themselves?

It seems the sight of Blair’s grinning mug prompted this dyspeptic outburst:

Blair's dubious record has led to staggering personal enrichment. His coterie has done just as fabulously. Peter Mandelson, our erstwhile business secretary, has just taken up a lucrative job as consultant for Lazard, the American investment bank that advised Kraft on its controversial takeover of Cadbury last year.

So? That doesn’t come as a surprise, surely? Did you think they weren’t all in it for what they could get?

British police too are believed to be unimpeachable. What a shock it is for the public to hear about undercover infiltrators, and (we must assume) agents provocateurs, who have gained the trust of and entry into campaign groups – most of them legitimate and exercising their right to oppose official policies.

And if that’s all they ever do – legally protest – then there will be nothing to find out.
But if it isn’t…

In Kenya, meanwhile, policemen were photographed shooting dead three unarmed suspects – a horrifying story. Rob Macaire, our man in Nairobi, condemned the officers and others who frequently use violence against the people they are meant to protect. But we too have our law-and-order thugs. Ian Tomlinson died after being struck by a police baton. Jean Charles de Menezes was shot because officers thought he was a terrorist, and there have been many more down the years.

Yes, because a mistaken identity incident and a bit of rough treatment leading to an accidental death is exactly the same as a deliberate extra-judicial execution in a third world hellhole…

I am not suggesting this country is devoid of probity and is as corrupt and opaque as Tunisia and similar regimes.

No, perish the thought, Yaz!

But believing their country is the best blinds citizens to the steady erosion of values and principles that should be sacrosanct. Britain is losing the moral authority to lecture other nations on good governance and justice.

Well, no. No, we’re not.

The powerful don't understand that a national reputation needs to be constantly renewed. Those of us who came to stay, who left behind lands of chaos and institutionalised barbarism, who have always admired this democracy, are apprehensive.

You’re always apprehensive, Yaz. It’s a paying gig, after all.