Labour MP for Slough in the British parliament, Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi, hit the nail on the head when he said that “Tory ministers have some explaining to do” and their government’s “decisions on travel must be based on science, not politics” because that is precisely what Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s government has done by easing travel restrictions on people coming from India while keeping Pakistan on the red list. That reeks of very strong political influence because, as another Labour MP, Naz Shah, said, “India’s seven-day infection rate is 20 per 100,000 people and (it) is now on the amber list but Pakistan, whose seven-day infection rate is just 14 per 100,000 people, well below the vast majority of amber list restrictions, remains on the list.” This is not the first time the Johnson administration is playing politics to appease and accommodate the Indian lobby in his country because, as MP Shah went on to point out, this mistake has been made before and the last time it went out of its way to favour India it “led to the Delta variant becoming the most prominent Covid variant in the UK.” The Pakistani government, for its part, is doing the right thing by raising this issue diplomatically. But there’s only so much that can be expected from such an approach since London would no doubt have factored in our displeasure and reservations before PM Johnson signed off on the new list. This will move much faster if MPs within the British parliament create enough noise, based on their constituents’ uneasiness about the double standards, to force the government to reconsider. If anything, Pakistan needs to be acknowledged for its handling of the pandemic right from the beginning. Back when practically all of UK was shut down very tightly, and the virus was still not showing any signs of receding, Pakistan was already reopening for business again. Our practice of smart lockdowns, which much of the world including the UK later embraced, has clearly been the difference maker. That should make the country more approachable for the rest of the world. Hopefully the UK government will realise its mistake sooner rather than later and greenlight Pakistani travelers to its shores again. *