Daily Times

The Brits are known for their wry wit and sense of irony. Which is just as well, really. Especially given that supporters of the American president — a gentleman whom more than a dozen women have accused of sexual misconduct — took it upon themselves to heckle the London mayor as he tried to deliver a speech on gender equality.

Sadiq Khan, demonstrated once again that his Muslim faith is no barrier to having a true British sense of humour. Returning to the stage he made a quip about being “distracted by the actions of what some would call very ‘stable geniuses’”; an unveiled reference to the term that Donald Trump has inaptly used to describe himself.

Those behind the incident are part of a little known right-wing group, the White Pendragons. By their own admission, they want Trump as much as they do Brexit. And they are men who seemingly don’t like to hang about. They had, after all, intended to make a citizen’s arrest of Mr Khan. Though after being escorted from the premises by the police, they said they would make do with going to the pub instead. One of their contentions is that it is the London mayor’s job to clean up the city — not to dictate who gets to visit and who doesn’t.  Yet even here, poor Khan can’t seem to get a break. For the group believes that his being a practising Muslim makes him unfit to lead that great cosmopolitan city.

Yet we can’t help be in a little awe of him; though we still maintain that Jeremy Corbyn is the one genuine statesman that Britain has. But nevertheless, we would like to come out and say that Sadiq Khan is more than learning the lessons of the trade. Since he burst on to the scene in his mayoral garb back in 2016, he has gone from coming across as a jammy Blairite to a man more than ready and willing to put his city first. Even if this means standing up to the unquiet American president.

Almost as soon as Donald Trump was elected to the White House, the British Prime Minister rushed across to Washington and did her best to woo him into splashing across the pond to quaint little Britain. After all, the country needed to shore up as many trade-friendly nations as possible as it prepared for the post-Brexit aftermath. Yet following the various and, some say, inevitable Trump Twitter storms — from the Muslim travel ban to retweeting a post from a British far-right group — the London mayor has been steadfast in his calling upon PM Theresa May to cancel the American presidential state visit.

This was a call that was repeated last week. And it followed Trump’s immense dissing of the relocation of the US embassy from the extremely upscale Mayfair area of London to south of the river. The horror. In the kind of macho fighting talk that we have come to expect from the most powerful man in the world, the showman-president tweeted that he would not be heading to Blighty next month to cut the ribbon to inaugurate the new embassy building. Khan was quick to tweet that Trump had finally got the message that he would not be welcome in London Town due to his unashamedly divisive policies.

Such exchanges serve a function beyond entertainment. They underscore how a London mayor has the courage to stand up to the Prime Minister of the country and call her out on ill-advised policies. And it is a lesson that our leadership here in Pakistan needs to learn. For presently, all we have are outbursts not dissimilar to a baby throwing its rattle out of the pram. And even then, if the latter is flung too far and too hard — the baby finds itself being thrown out with the bathwater. This is simply not cricket. For this is not how democracy works.  *

Published in Daily Times, January 14^th 2018.