The British queen has appointed her 15th prime minister since she took over from her father in February 1952. Immediately upon his appointment the new prime minister carried out a ‘night of the blond knives’ ministerial reshuffle that resulted in a bill for the taxpayer as ministers receive £250,000 in farewell pay-offs.
What grabbed my attention were some of his new ministerial appointments and their ethnic roots. Firstly, it is widely known that the prime minister can trace his roots back to Ali Kemal, a Turkish Muslim, and the ethnic roots of other appointments are also worth noting.
The new finance minister is the son of an immigrant Pakistani bus driver. The new home secretary is the daughter of Guajarati Indian parents who fled Uganda during the rule of Idi Amin. The deputy prime minister is the son of a Jewish refugee who came to Britain from Czechoslovakia in 1938. The leader of the House of Commons’ mother is an American of Irish origin. All is not lost with the British blood lines. The work and pensions secretary, through her mother, is a direct descendant of Charles II and his mistress Barbara Palmer and is a 10th cousin once removed of The Queen.
This is great news demonstrating that in today’s Britain it is possible to gain high political office irrespective of your ethnic background. The outgoing prime minister took the opportunity during her last public pronouncement to say how pleased she was to be an example of what women can achieve in modern Britain.
I’ve since checked out the make-up of the presidential team in the USA and found out that many of the team have parents, grandparents and great grandparents who migrated to the USA. Two of his top team Mike Pence and Mike Pompeo can trace their roots back to Ireland and Italy. The president’s son-in-law has roots to Belarus and the president’s wife is from modern day Slovenia. Other members of the team can trace their family heritage back to Ireland, Russia, Finland, Lebanon and Taiwan.
Since the uproar about the chants during the North Carolina campaign rally on June 17, the president has defended the rally-goers as “patriots”. He has repeatedly questioned the loyalty of the Democratic politicians, known as “the squad”, with ethnic roots that go back to Puerto Rico, Somalia and Palestine.
The president’s mother Mary was an economic migrant from the Western Isles in Scotland who came to the USA in 1930. She came from a wretchedly poor subsistence farming background and English was her second language. His father Fred was conceived in Bavaria Germany after the return of his parents from the USA in 1904 due to his mother being homesick. The Bavarian authorities suspected that they had left Germany in order to avoid service in the Imperial Army. As a result, the family returned to the USA in 1905.
I can conclude from the above multiculturalism is alive and well in both the UK and the USA allowing those from different ethnic backgrounds to get to the top of the tree. It’s such a pity Donald Trump, named after his Scottish grandfather, seems to have a very blinkered view of who is truly an American patriot.