Bharat Rakshak

Kashi wrote:Here's two more "Right (dis)honourables" from UK

Liam Byrne@LiamByrneMP
Today thousands of people marched from Downing Street to the Indian High Commission to send a clear message to Mr Modi - you cannot silence the people of Kashmir.

AND

Steve Baker MP✔@SteveBakerHW
Happy to raise human rights in Kashmir on behalf of constituents in Parliament today during questions to @foreignoffice

Vivek K wrote:I mean two can play at a game! The British HC in India would receive reciprocal treatment and security. Londonistan's Mayor is introducing anarchy to demo his power.

darshan wrote:Protests against britshut's human rights violations, genocides, colonial reparations, etc. are long due. There needs to be anti colonial day.

mmasand wrote: Sadiq Khan hasn't been able to bring crime down on his own streets, or even the Home Office as police numbers had been cut repeatedly by May as Home Secretary. If you think Sadiq is unreasonable be very afraid if Diane Abbott were to step into the Home office in a caretaker government scenario. India might as well scale down its HC to consular services only through the BPO's.

Peregrine wrote:Violence against any community is 'deplorable': British foreign secretary condemns protests outside Indian high commission - ANI

LONDON: British foreign secretary Dominic Raab on Wednesday condemned the recent attack on the Indian high commission building here and said that any violence against the British Indians or any other community residing in the United Kingdom is 'deplorable'.

Addressing the British Parliament on Tuesday, Raab said, "Such violence should not be conducted anywhere else for that matter. Communities now need to reduce that tension but on a positive note, such as build up confidence-building measures. This would not only allow reducing tension between communities in Kashmir and also between India and Pakistan."

The Indian high commission in London was gripped with fresh protests on Monday over the issue of Jammu and Kashmir that turned violent.

The incident was raised in British Parliament by Shailesh Vara, MP for North West Cambridgeshire, who said, "The violence and abuse targeted towards the British Indian community on this occasion is completely unacceptable as it would be to any community on the streets of UK."

Suraj wrote:What are the international diplomatic laws/norms/guidelines regarding a guest nation's right to deploy armed forces at embassy outposts to secure such locations ?

Considering the British are unable to offer adequate law and order support within their own shores, how can India guarantee the safety of its own embassy there ?

disha wrote:

mmasand wrote: Sadiq Khan hasn't been able to bring crime down on his own streets, or even the Home Office as police numbers had been cut repeatedly by May as Home Secretary. If you think Sadiq is unreasonable be very afraid if Diane Abbott were to step into the Home office in a caretaker government scenario. India might as well scale down its HC to consular services only through the BPO's.

Can India make Londonistan police to use pellet guns?

Suraj wrote:What are the international diplomatic laws/norms/guidelines regarding a guest nation's right to deploy armed forces at embassy outposts to secure such locations ?
Considering the British are unable to offer adequate law and order support within their own shores, how can India guarantee the safety of its own embassy there ?

BBC home affairs correspondent Danny Shaw said the drugs had originated in Pakistan.

Suraj wrote:I know of the Yvonne Fletcher incident. It's not really comparable to the current situation since it's not the Indian embassy attacking or wanting to attack the outside world. It appears India needs something like the Marine Corps Embassy Security Group in places like London where the civil administration is too weak or incompetent to do its job well. Do we have such an agency of the military ?

Suraj wrote:What are the international diplomatic laws/norms/guidelines regarding a guest nation's right to deploy armed forces at embassy outposts to secure such locations ?

Considering the British are unable to offer adequate law and order support within their own shores, how can India guarantee the safety of its own embassy there ?

The ghosts frightening England

If the UK exits the European Union without a deal, there is a possibility of Scotland and Northern Ireland leaving the Union


17th August 2019

By Minhaz Merchant

As Britain hurtles towards a no-deal exit from the European Union (EU), PM Boris Johnson’s take-no-prisoners tactics could backfire badly. At stake is the future of the United Kingdom as an entity. The UK comprises four nations: England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. Each has a different history and a complicated relationship with one another. Brexit could rupture at least two of these relationships.

Scotland voted to remain in the EU by a large majority (62%) in the 2016 Brexit referendum. In sharp contrast, England voted to leave (53.4%). Calls for Scotland’s secession from the United Kingdom are growing louder. In the September 2014 referendum on Scottish independence, 55% of Scots voted to stay in the UK. The mood has changed dramatically after Johnson took office as prime minister last month. A recent opinion poll showed a majority (52%) of Scots would vote to leave the UK if a new referendum on Scotland’s independence were held today.

The UK was created by a Union of England and Scotland in 1707. Till then the two were separate kingdoms with separate laws, educational systems and legislatures. Has the Union run its course? Before Brexit, the Scots believed independence would be economically damaging to Scotland. But if the UK leaves the EU without a deal, the consequences on Scotland’s economy would be severe. It has benefitted from being a part of the EU, the world’s largest trading bloc. The choice therefore is stark: the UK or the EU?

Emotion comes into play as well. The English and Scots simply don’t like each other very much. They have fought brutal wars and retain their independent legal and educational systems.

Even more dire from England’s point of view than Scotland exiting the UK is the status of Northern Ireland. It is the single biggest cause of a potential no-deal Brexit. Johnson wants the Irish backstop removed from the withdrawal agreement signed by the EU and his predecessor, former PM Theresa May.

The Irish backstop is a UK-EU compromise: Britain stays in the customs union with the EU in exchange for a border without checks between Northern Ireland (a part of the UK) and the Irish Republic (not a part of the UK but an enthusiastic member of the EU). Johnson and other hard-core Brexiteers dislike the idea of the Irish backstop because it involves Britain staying in the EU customs union. They want a clean break. The EU in turn insists on Britain remaining in the customs union if it wants to avoid border checks between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic.

A united Ireland is the ghost that frightens the British more than Scottish independence. Colonial Britain deceitfully “populated” the northern part of Ireland with English Protestant migrants from the 1600s. Ireland’s Catholic majority was gradually whittled down. The UK of Great Britain and Ireland was formed by the Acts for Union 1800. A year later, in 1801, the independent Irish parliament was abolished. It was not until a series of battles between colonial Britain and Irish patriots that Ireland gained full independence in 1922. But not without a parting kick: six counties of Ireland opted to stay with Britain, carving Ireland into Protestant Northern Ireland and Catholic Irish Republic.

Over the decades, the population of Catholics in Northern Ireland has increased to well over 42%. Sectarian strife between Protestants and Catholics and terror attacks in Britain peaked in the 1970s and 1980s. Today, an uneasy peace prevails though Northern Ireland’s legislature has been non-functional for nearly two years. Brexit has raised the prospect of future unification between the two Irelands. It is a prospect Britain dreads.

That is why the Irish backstop is such a tinderbox in the Brexit debate. Were Scotland to seek independence from the UK and the two Irelands to seek a merger, that would spell the end of the UK. As Jonathan Gorvett wrote in Foreign Policy, quoting Jon Tonge, a professor of British and Irish politics: “Ask me if the UK will still exist in its current form in a generation, and I’d have to say—that’s a very tough call.”

For India, dealing with a shrunken Britain has some merit. It enhances India’s bargaining power on two key issues: immigration and trade. For all the hype surrounding the number of Indian-origin ministers in Boris Johnson’s cabinet—Priti Patel, Alok Sharma and Rishi Sunak—the fact is that all three were in Theresa May’s cabinet as well (Patel though was dropped in 2007 after she met Israeli diplomats without government authorisation). Indeed, May’s cabinet had several Indian-origin ministers. Johnson’s Indian connection by marriage (now impending divorce) to Marina Wheeler is overplayed. Johnson may not be a brazen racist or an Islamaphobe, despite his Turkish ancestry, but he is not above making racist, Islamaphobic and homophobic remarks.

If Johnson persists with his no-deal Brexit and the EU doesn’t blink (it won’t), Britain will probably head later this year into its third general election in four years. The way Scotland and Northern Ireland vote in that election will be watched carefully. After Brexit, the UK of Great Britain and Northern Ireland will face its moment of truth.

Minhaz Merchant

The author is an editor and publisher

Tweets @MinhazMerchant

ArjunPandit wrote:who gets to keep the UN seat if Scotland and NI are out of UK? Britain only???

When Boris Johnson, as editor of the Spectator, published a poem in 2004 calling the Scots a “verminous race” that deserved “comprehensive extermination”, he may not have imagined it could come back to haunt him 15 years later in his first weeks as prime minister.

“The Scotch – what a verminous race!” begins Friendly Fire by James Michie. “Canny, pushy, chippy, they’re all over the place / Battening off us with false bonhomie / Polluting our stock, undermining our economy.”

The purportedly satirical poem is no longer available on the Spectator’s website, but it is remembered with cold fury by some in the fractured, but relatively conservative market town of Inverurie in Aberdeenshire. “If you’re at the receiving end to being likened to vermin, you’re not impressed,” Rae Jardine, a local Scottish National Party member, said with restraint.

ArjunPandit wrote:who gets to keep the UN seat if Scotland and NI are out of UK? Britain only???

ArjunPandit wrote:who gets to keep the UN seat if Scotland and NI are out of UK? Britain only???

eklavya wrote:^^^^^
Russia kept hold of several thousand nuclear warheads after the dissolution of the USSR.

An issue for England may be that the Vanguard class submarines that carry the Trident nuclear missiles are based in Scotland. The SNP is against nuclear weapons.

https://www.snp.org/policies/pb-do-the- ... t-renewal/

And post Brexit, England may not be able to afford either a nuclear deterrent or a new base for the submarines in England.

g.sarkar wrote:

ArjunPandit wrote:who gets to keep the UN seat if Scotland and NI are out of UK? Britain only???

When Soviet Union collapsed did Ukraine get the USSR's seat in the Security Council? Soviet Union was succeeded by Russia. In India's case for example, it succeeded British India, Pakistan was not a part of it. Going by the same logic England will get to keep the seat.
Gautam