London Diary: Perhaps the sun has truly set on Britannia

Stop and search

Police racism exists. One of the most recognisable British Asian police officers has revealed the extent of covert racism prevalent in the force he once proudly led and, indeed, often defended against allegations of institutional racism.

Neil Basu, who was an assistant commissioner of police and made his name leading counter-terrorism operations until he retired in 2022, has said that police “regularly” stop and search him, treating him like a suspected criminal. Basu said there’s only one reason he has been subjected to such “humiliating” experiences—because he is of Asian descent.

“I’m pretty confident that I’m the only chief constable in the last 30 years to have been regularly stopped and searched as a child, a teenager and an adult, including two weeks ago when I last passed through Heathrow. I guarantee […] I’ll be searched again. It’s ironic, because I’m the person who used to set the rules for that,” he told the Times Crime and Justice Commission.

Alleging that stop-and-search powers were “massively overused”, he added that chief constables thinking “it’s okay” because of “lawful reasons” are “massively underestimating the power of that interaction with a member of the public.” The practice had led, he said, to a serious collapse of trust in the police among people from ethnic minority backgrounds. Will things change under a Labour government?

Neil Basu, former senior British police officer Rishi Sunak praiseworthy, at last!

Finally, someone has said something nice about Rishi Sunak. Remember him? Britain’s prime minister for a wee while? As the newly minted Labour government struggles to defuse the scandal over prime minister Keir Starmer and his senior cabinet ministers accepting freebies worth thousands of pounds from influential businesses, Sunak has been praised for his ‘decency and integrity’.

Consider the following letter to the Times from leading wine merchant, Justin Langham:

‘This (Starmer and his colleagues’ behaviour) contrasts sharply with the occasion when we sent a case of our English sparkling wine to Rishi Sunak, who was then chancellor, to thank him for taking the time to research and answer a question about duty on English wine production.

'The response had not been favourable and there was no further contact...

'A handwritten note of thanks arrived within days; months later, we discovered that the gift had been immediately handed over to the government and then bought back at full market value by Mr Sunak. This is the level of decency and integrity we should expect in our senior politicians.’

Now put that in your cup and drink it.

Badly behaved Brits

At home, it’s all “excuse me”, “sorry” and “thank you”. But when they go abroad as tourists, all this politeness goes out the window, as the holiday spirit takes over and reveals another face of the famously buttoned-up Brits.

In a poll that asked people from 26 countries whether they thought their compatriots made a bad impression abroad, Britain was way ahead, at 57 per cent.

In other words, British tourists are the most badly behaved across Europe prompting a number of local authorities in some countries, notably Spain and Italy, to effectively ban them. Much of the criticism is directed at men for drinking too much, creating too much noise and generally misbehaving.

One British travel writer Anna Heathcote wrote a long blog ‘to explore... just how unpopular we are—or perceive ourselves to be—and the reasons behind why so many of us lose our inhibitions the minute we set foot in the airport’.

This is generally attributed to excessive alcohol enhancing the sense of being entitled to enjoy themselves as much as they want. ‘Maybe we’re inhibited at home, and the disinhibition that comes with being abroad turns us into boors.

Maybe it’s the drink itself: we don’t sip wine in a sensible southern European way, we chug the spirits like Scandinavians and then behave like marauding Vikings.

Maybe it’s class: perhaps the raucous behaviour is putting two fingers up at middle-class mores. Maybe the empire encouraged us all to behave arrogantly abroad,’ wrote Times columnist Emma Duncan. Really? Blame it on the empire if you like, but as far as I can tell, the vast majority of British tourists are perfectly well-behaved, simply wishing to enjoy a peaceful holiday in the sun that they are so sorely deprived of.

Margaret Thatcher who?

A British journalist planning to write a biography of Margaret Thatcher has said that the inspiration for the book was his 26-year-old personal trainer who told him: “Margaret Thatcher: I’ve heard the name but what did she do?”

Iain Dale, the journalist in question, realised that a whole generation was largely clueless about the Iron Lady. What a contrast from the late 1980s, he recalled, when Thatcher was so dominant that his seven-year-old niece asked him: “Uncle Iain, can a man become prime minister?”

And, finally,

Sir Alex Younger, former head of MI6, was ‘dismayed’ after the Mossad pager attack on Lebanon. “Here’s me telling you that our world is not like the books and then this happens!” he said at a literary festival. The attack was straight from a John le Carré novel. Who would believe Sir Alex after this?

Sir Alex Younger