Features

Some British judges and experiences in outstation courts

Published

3 years ago

2023/03/19

Thilina Walpola

Sir Sydney Abrahams

Excerpted from the Memoirs of Cabinet Secretary BP Peiris

Sir Sydney Abrahams, Chief Justice, who had succeeded MacDonnell, said that on behalf of the little band of brothers of which he was proud to be the captain, he wished to tell his eldest brother how much they would miss him, how much they loved him and how much they admired him. Poyser left to assume duties as the Chief Justice of the Straits Settlements.

Of Abrahams, I know very little because, shortly after his assumption of office, I left the Bar for Legal Drafting. I do know that he insisted that R. V. Perera should take silk and should take his oaths wearing the Chief’s silk gown. I believe Abrahams left after some displeasure with the Government following the famous Bracegirdle case.

I must now speak of the few occasions on which I appeared in our outstation courts. I have mentioned how I came to be in my uncle Jayawickrama’s house at Matara on the day before a rape case in which I was his junior. The Magistrate was a man who was puffed up with his own pride, thought a great deal about his own self, used unjudicial language from the Bench and could be nasty to anyone, including senior members of his Bar.

My uncle told me that in his 30 years at the Bar, he had not had a “breeze” with the Bench, and had accordingly, during the whole of that Magistrate’s three year term as judge in the town, consistently refused to accept briefs in his court. He asked me to appear in court the next day and also give his own appearance. I was in court with my barrister’s blue bag on which were marked my initials. I was happy to meet three colleagues from the Law Library who had set up in practice there – R. H. E. de Silva, A. F. Wijemanne and Fred Alles.

An excise case, having been called before mine, the Excise Inspector got into the box and made his complaint to the effect that he had arrested the accused woman for being in possession of illicit toddy. The pot of toddy was produced in court. The judge listened to the Inspector’s evidence without putting pen to paper. He then told “the Inspector to clear out of court without wasting his time. He asked the Inspector to put his time to better use without harassing poor innocent women. He then called the woman and asked her to take her pot away which she proceeded to do.

She was then called back and asked why she removed the pot if it was not her’s. Receiving no reply, the judge fined her two rupees. Up. to now, the judge had. recorded no evidences, and, I asked Wijemanne about this new procedure. I was told that the judge often acted in this manner. He would record a summary of the Inspector’s evidence and add, “Accused pleads guilty – fined two rupees”. The senior proctors did not dare to file a petition of appeal. In order to avoid incurring the displeasure of the judge, they paid a junior a fee for his signature on the petition.

The next case was one of Wije’s which was down for legal argument. When he had developed his argument and started to quote a judgment of the Supreme Court, reported in the New Law Reports, the pompous man on the bench interposed “Don’t bother to cite Supreme Court law to me. I gave a judgment to the same effect some time ago, and I prefer to follow mine.” There was a sharp interchange of words on this between judge and advocate. Wije, at that time, had that youthful short temper. My recollection is that he packed up his books and left the court without completing his submissions.

With this introduction to a type of Magistrate I had not met before, my case was called. I informed the court that Mr Jayawickrama appeared with me for the accused. “Who? Our Sylvester?” asked the judge, and continued “He never appears in my court. I should like to have him in my court. I will give you a date. What’s your name?” Now, this last question is one which a judge never puts to counsel in keeping with the etiquette of the Bar, the assumption being that the most junior advocate is well known to the judiciary of the country.

Normally counsel appearing for the first time in a strange court hands a chit with his name well in advance to the Secretary of the court and this chit is discreetly passed to the Bench when his case is called. To the question what my name was, I said “B. P. Peiris”. The judge apparently did not hear and, cupping his hand to his ear, kept repeating “D. P. ?” I turned my blue bag with my initials towards him. He looked at it, was obviously annoyed, but nodded.

He again asked me to take a date to allow Mr Jayawickrama to appear, but I protested, saying that the clients had been put to a deal of expense and that I was ready to go on with the trial. The Prosecution was therefore asked to lead evidence. The first witness was the Government Medical Officer who had examined the twelve year old girl who had been raped. The girl’s mother, a good-looking woman, was in the employ of the next witness, another doctor, who was a cousin of the judge.

When this witness, to whom the first complaint had been made, was in the box, the judge asked him “May I know, Doctor, in what capacity the girl’s mother is employed under you”. “As the ayah to my children,” answered the witness. Said the judge “I will put that down on the record, Doctor, to make the position quite clear.” After the evidence of the two doctors the judge forced a date on me and I had to submit. I did not appear on the next date; nor did my uncle. He probably asked the proctor to carry on. The judge “retired” a few years later to resume his practice at the Bar.

I appeared, some months later, before an equally arrogant man who was Magistrate at Gampola. My father’s brother, a poor man, was trying to eject a tenant, after due notice, from a small tea land which he owned. I was appearing pro deo. Having no car, I went to Gampola by train. The proctor for the tenant was E. G. Jonklass who came to court accompanied by two labourers carrying suitcases, said to contain law books, on their heads. My proctor asked me not to be nervous; the suitcases were there everyday but they had never been opened.

Jonklass obtained seven postponements in all. I was then compelled to tell the judge that I was determined to see the case to its conclusion and asked for a short date. He fixed a day three days later and said he would take the case up on that day even in the absence of Mr Jonklass. I wasted three days on each trial date, one to go up by train, one for the trial and one to come down; and the judge knew it. I said I would have to stay in the town. He said “Well, stay here, its a nice town; have a look round the place.”

In the evening, I paid a courtesy call on him with no intention at all of discussing the case. We were both advocates and I saw nothing improper in it. A very interesting conversation, over whisky found the time passing quickly. It was 9 p.m. and I stood up to leave. The judge said, in parting, “Peiris, I hate that fellow Jonklass; he had all the Civil Service judges in his pocket with his big house, his tennis court and his bridge parties. He can’t have me. I’ll give you judgment but I am weak on the civil law. Direct me.”

‘What ho!’ I thought, I was a bloody fool to have come. But, having come, what was I to do? Tell Jonklass? Tell my proctor and throw up the brief? Was it the judge speaking, or the whisky? My mind was confused as I walked away fulminating. In the end, I decided to lie doggo, take Sandara’s advice, and go into court with an open mind. In court the next day, it was smooth sailing at about five knots. I was asked to submit my argument at dictation speed and every word was taken down. The judgment was so strongly in my favour that even the appeal court could not upset it. Here, I felt, was another unjudicial judge. He also “retired” prematurely and started practising in another outstation.

T. F. C. Roberts, my good friend, took up his first judicial appointment as Magistrate of my home town, Panadura, and as friends, we visited each other frequently. Naturally, I did not expect him, by reason of our friendship, to extend to me the slightest preferential treatment if I had occasion to appear in his court. I did appear once, again pro deo, and had to call a number of witnesses to prove that my client, who was charged with theft was, at the time of the alleged offence, several miles away from the scene of the offence.

Although, at this time I was living at Panadura, I was considered as “Colombo Counsel” and my case was called first. The judge had a heavy roll that day and lost his temper when I had seven witnesses. “All you people seem to think, when you come here, that you are in the Supreme Court. You must remember that this is a summary trial,” to which I replied that a summary trial was not necessarily a short trial, which appeared to make him more angry. “Call them all, call them all”, he shouted at me, referring to the witnesses, and after hearing them, gave my man the maximum sentence.

Lalitha Rajapakse appeared free for my client in appeal and got him off. Fortunately, there are still honourable members of our profession who are willing to appear and who have appeared pro deo in certain circumstances for clients who are unable to pay their fees or when they are called upon to assist the court. Among these are eminent and expensive silks. But why should these gentlemen be asked to give their time and their services to save an innocent pauper who has been ordered to undergo some punishment by a judge who is peppery and impatient, or who, that morning, has had a quarrel with his wife, or whose qualities are such that he should never have become or been appointed a judge?

In another case before judge Roberts, a friend of mine, a photographer in Panadura, was charged with the theft of a Colt revolver from a British soldier who was, at that time stationed in the town. My friend had volunteered for service in the war of 1914-1918, had fought at Gallipoli and at other places in France and returned home safely with a long row of medals. In World War II, he used to entertain the British soldiers in the town lavishly in his studio. He was not the man to steal the revolver of another soldier.

Only one witness was called for the defence, my father, Gate Mudaliyar Edmund Peiris, J.P., U.M. who gave evidence as to the good character of the accused. Judge Roberts found him guilty and imposed the maximum penalty, I believe, six months jail. My friend, A. H. C. de Silva appeared for him in appeal before Dalton J. I advised my client to come to court with all his medals pinned on his breast and sit in the last row at the very back of the court. At the end of counsel’s argument, Dalton asked whether the accused was present in court and, to a reply in the affirmative, said “Let him stand up”. He studied the man’s medals for some time, he probably recognized them, and dictated a judgment returning the case to the Magistrate for the imposition of a nominal fine of one rupee.

In concluding this Chapter, I must refer to the three bits of advice which B. F. de Silva gave me at the beginning of my career as an advocate: about reading the New Law Reports – I did that assiduously, indexing every case.

About not appearing for less than one guinea, I have a story. A proctor friend of mine asked me to come to the Court of Requests instead of wasting my time in the Appeal Courts and promised to give me all his work and that of a friend of his provided I showed my bona fides by just sitting in this crowded court for two weeks. After two weeks, I told him I had done so and he immediately gave me a brief for the next day. Inside the brief was a five-rupee note. I asked him what the money was for and was told that it was my fee. I told him that my fee was one guinea and was rebuked for standing on my dignity. I was asked why I should be paid a guinea when he was able to retain the then most senior advocate practising in that court for the same fee. I handed the brief back and never entered the Court of Requests thereafter.

About never signing a proctor’s receipt for more than the actual fee paid, I have, again, a story. I had been retained as junior to a silk and had been paid the usual guinea but had not been given a brief, with the result that I did not know what the case was about. We were for the respondents and were not called upon to speak. In due course, the proctor brought the bill of costs for my signature “Fee paid to Mr Advocate B. P. Peiris. 3 Guas”. I said I was paid only one guinea and would sign for that.

Then came the bargaining as if I was buying half a pound of brinjals off a basket-woman. “These are hard days, Mr Peiris, I’ll give you another guinea and you sign for three. We’ll split the difference.” I told him that if he gave me another guinea, I would sign for two. I did not get the other guinea. I signed for one, and I never got another brief from that proctor again. B. F., that honest and upright man, must have known all about the dishonesty in the profession and the tricks of the trade.

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Features

Role of identity in the making and breaking of West Asian peace

Published

14 hours ago

2026/06/25

Sahan Weerasooriya

Negotiators at the Pakistani-negotiated preliminary peace talks. BBC

The West Asian peace effort continues waveringly amid uncertainties. The world could be considered as having ‘some breathing space’ currently in this tangled situation on account of a dip in oil prices but whether such relief would be of a long term nature is left to be seen.

Meanwhile, some vital ‘details’ in the peace process are continuing to hobble it. One such factor is the nuclear issue. While US President Donald Trump is on record that Iran’s purported nuclear programme from now on will be monitored by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), this assertion is being denied by the Iranian authorities who indicate that Iran will be coming under no such regime. That is, Iran will be answerable to no one with regard to its legitimate right to defend itself.

Accordingly, an early closure to the nuclear question could not be expected and the furthering of peace in the region hinges on the principal sides being of one mind on the issue. Moreover, toll-free shipping through the Strait of Hormuz is proving to be a bone of contention between the warring sides.

However, perhaps going largely unnoticed in the Middle East region are identity questions of considerable magnitude that have stood in the way of the region making some headway towards a peace settlement and which would continue to undermine such a process going forward. Identity, or a group’s self conception, is by far the most intractable of the factors in the conflict and the main sides would do well to manage it effectively before long.

US Vice President J.D. Vance, as pointed out in this column last week, fired one of the first salvos in this regard in the current peace effort. He reportedly said: ‘Regional peace and stability includes stopping the funding of “terrorist organizations” .’ He probably had in mind the Hezbollah organization which is funded and armed by Iran but, needless to say, the latter would reject this statement out of hand because it does not see the Hezbollah as terroristic in orientation.

Accordingly, the tangled issue of ‘who is a terrorist?’ would recur to hamper the West Asian peace bid. An important corollary to this matter is that Middle Eastern militants would be branding US administrations as terroristic considering the humanly costly military interventions undertaken by the latter over the decades in the world’s war zones.

It is difficult to see the main sides taking up the issue of terror and arriving at a common understanding on the problem over the next couple of months in their peace deliberations but the unresolved question could be expected to be the proverbial ‘elephant in the room’ that could even wear the sides down. Accordingly, ‘quick fixes’ to the Middle East imbroglio would need to be ruled out.

However, paring down terror to its essentials, it needs to be found that in contemporary times it is identity and issues growing out of it that keep the question alive and render it intractable. In fact the problem should be seen as igniting and sustaining a multiplicity of conflicts world wide.

So pervasive are identity questions that they are seen by some as having played a role in leading to the recent resignation of Keir Starmer as UK Prime Minister. Among other things, the latter is seen as having been incapable of managing migration related issues besides falling short in strengthening domestic social cohesion.

Identity issues came to a head in the UK in the form of the recent anti-immigrant riots in Northern Ireland. Clearly, some immigrants continue to be seen as aliens and parasitic in nature in some parts of the UK by jingoistic elements. Thus is ignited anti-foreigner violence.

That said, some of the most laudable measures for the promotion of peaceful race relations are found in the UK today. The latter’s race relations legislation could be seen as constituting a model for the rest of the world and needs to be studied and adopted by particularly the global South where identity conflicts are rampant.

Unfortunately, racial amity is not being considered a priority by the Trump administration. Under the latter immigrants are being seen by supremacist whites as the archetypal ‘Other’ who should be violently shunned. Accordingly, social cohesion in the US too is being steadily undermined and stepped-up race hate in the country shouldn’t come as a surprise.

In the West Asian region, archetypal ‘Othering’ could prove particularly pernicious and destructive. It could lead to the unraveling of the current peace talks between the adversaries and needs to be addressed by them if the negotiations are to prove productive.

For far too long the West and Israel have been viewed as archetypal enemies by Iran and its supporters. On the other hand, Palestinian militants have been habitually seen by the Far Right in the US and by hard line Israelis as sworn enemies who are best eliminated. These seemingly unresolvable divides in the Middle East could bring down the present negotiatory process.

Even if the present round of mediated negotiations between the US and Iran lead to a substantive cessation of hostilities in West Asia, the divisive mindsets of the prime antagonists, that is, the US and its ally Israel on the one side and Iran and its supportive militant groups on the other, would need to be changed for the better if enduring peace is to be given a chance. That is, mindsets would need to be transformed on both sides of the divide from mutual hostility to mutual amicability. No doubt, a long-gestation process.

It cannot be stressed enough that those mediating in this long-running conflict, themselves need to approach peace-making with unbiased minds. It needs to be realized, for example, that Israel too has been ‘hurting’ badly in this conflict over the decades to the degree to which the Palestinian side has been victimized cruelly, dispossessed and divested of dignity.

Any negotiated peaceful settlement should seek to address this persistent mindset malaise as well and turn enmity into amicability. An equitable solution that addresses the lingering grievances of both sides could lay the basis for this process of ‘Turning Spears into Ploughshares.’

‘Land and Bread’ have been at the heart of the Middle East conflict over the decades or even centuries. An equitable solution should provide these assets in equal measure for both sides. There is no getting away from the ‘Two State Solution’.

Features

Central bankers live on Short End Street; Economic planners live on Long End Street

Published

14 hours ago

2026/06/25

Sahan Weerasooriya

Long End Street is not a summation of Short End Streets. Eighteen short-term crises and no long-term growth in sight!

For quite some time, there has been no agency of government dealing with long-term economic and social policy questions. Nor have universities been of any help. There has been a National Planning Department in the Ministry of Finance but we have not seen any worthwhile reports from them. M. D. H. Jayawardena, in 1956, presented in Parliament the Six-Year Programme of Investment. Soloman Bandaranaike established a National Planning Council and a Planning Department, with Princy Siriwardena as its Director. They wrote the Ten-Year Plan, better known for its readability than its depth of analysis or policy content. Ten years or so later Dudley Senanayake established a Ministry of Planning and Employment with Gamani Corea (later of high international repute) as its Permanent Secretary. The Ministry was responsible for some useful analytical work and the development of a bureaucracy responsible for plan implementation. The latter was the work of a brilliant member of the Ceylon Civil Service, Godfrey Gunatilleke, who also worked in the Ministry. The major pre-occupation of the Ministry turned out to be the annual government budget and the management of direly scarce foreign exchange, all short term considerations. They set up a bureaucratic mechanism to evaluate capital expenditure in the government budget. The Ministry won plaudits for its Foreign Exchange Budget, some analytical wok on the economy, including population projections as well as education, in both schools and universities. As the 1970s wore on, planning earned a bad press and the new government of 1971 disbanded most of that and created a Department of National Planning in the Ministry of Finance, which survives to date.

A part of the purpose of this narrative has been to bring out that, all along, government has had no outfit of economists and sociologists whose job was to study long term changes in our society and the economy and in the rest of the world and propose solutions for consideration by governments. (A brilliant exception was the work on education, that was directed by Jinapala Alles, who had graduated in chemistry and was a fast learner and was at great ease with numbers. He was also an effortless leader of a small team of self-selected competent and enthusiastic public servants.) The government depended on the Central Bank for advice on long term development of the economy. Princy Siriwardena was seconded for service in the Planning Secretariat; similarly, Gamani Corea was from the Bank. Later, he was replaced with H.A.de S. Gunasekera, likely the most brilliant economics teacher in the University of Ceylon. He taught monetary economics, essentially short term. (His favourite economist Keynes famously wrote, “In the long run we are all dead”.)

When the Ministry of Planning and Employment was established in 1965, government plundered the Central Bank to staff it: Gamani Corea, R. M. Seneviratne, N. Ramachandran, Nihal Kappagoda and G. Usvatte-aratchi. Later, W. M. Tillekeratne and A. S. Jayawardena both long term employees of the Central Bank, were appointed as the chief economist of government. Jayawardena still later became the Governor of the Bank. Several other employees of the Bank, including J. B. Kelegama, P. B. Karandawela, P. B. Jayasundera worked at high levels in successive governments and that practice continued when Mahinda Siriwardena became the Secretary to the Ministry of Finance when Anura Dissanayake became the Minister of Finance. It is mysterious that the government saw no need for specialist advisers who would identify long term economic and social problems and solutions therefor, look out for markets and technology and warn of impending pitfalls, in contrast to our mighty neighbour which had a Planning Commission that handled long term problems and a Central Bank which had learnt to handle masterly, monetary problems.

Pitambar Pant, Montek Singh Ahluwalia, Manmohan Singh, I. G. Patel and Raghu Ram Rajan were most distinguished economics policymakers and central bankers. Japan benefited greatly from the work of MITI. So did Korea from its counterpart. This is not to argue that had there been an outfit of that sort, Sri Lanka would now be rich but to warn that the Central Bank is neither equipped nor fit to fight those battles. If you scan the Central Bank Act of 2023, you will find stabilisation the most frequently recurring theme. Clause 6 reads ‘The primary object (objective?) of the Central Bank shall be to achieve and maintain domestic price stability.’ The most generous reading that the Bank may have anything to do with economic development is in Clause 6 (4) ‘In pursuing the primary object (objective?), the Central Bank shall take into account, inter alia, the stabilisation of output towards its potential level.’ Lawyers may have a field day with that and economists may beg for its meaning.

Amarananda Jayawardena was the last Governor of the Central Bank who had understood that the central bank was equipped to handle short term problems and that not always valiantly, and that it had neither the tools nor the resources to plan and engineer long term development. As Governor, he did not speak for the government on long term economic and social problems, although prior to assuming duties as Governor of the Bank, he had been the chief economist of the government. Jayawardena knew all too well the nature of the tools and the resources he had and how far he could confidently aim and shoot. It was simply silly to produce a Five-year Road Map (no matter how colourful the accompanying graphics), when a central bank mainly used transactions in the short-term financial assets market to move interest rates and the demand for money. The Bank of England, for most of the 20^th century, used Commercial Paper with two ‘good names’ at its Discount Window. Short-term and long-term rates of interest, normally, behave in a predictable relationship, although occasionally, and in volatile times, that relationship may become inverted. (I am not well read on recent Fed and the Riks Bank market operations.)

The economists at the Central Bank are experts in monetary policy and are rarely knowledgeable about economic growth. An exception was S. B. D. de Silva and he found writing a half page note to the Centra Bank Bulletin (monthly) stultifying. He left the Bank quite young and continued studying economics until the very end of his life. As undergraduates they may have read on economic growth and development but as professionals in the central bank, it is unlikely that they kept working on problems in that area. They may also have learned, some time, that there has been no central bank credited with spearheading economic development in any country. Therefore, to pretend that they can advise the government on economic planning, is a hobby which they would be wise to desist from.

We did a splendid job of saving our new born children and their mothers as indicated in low infant mortality and maternal mortality rates. We scored an even more resounding victory in educating all our children. If we have any claim to any civilizing missions in the 20^th century, these two stand out. Beside them, we have been mostly failures. The economy has advanced only laggardly. It has miserably failed to exploit excellent opportunities to sell in burgeoning markets, output employing a healthy and educated labour force. Japan, South Korea, China, Vietnam, south India, Ethiopia, Rwanda and several other countries, all (except Japan) late comers to the game compared to Sri Lanka, succeeded in doing just that. It is wrong to blame governments alone for poor economic growth, as many do. Most economic activity in this country is run by the private sector and leaders there have made poor use of opportunities.

When ministers of government and its employers collect bribes, private sector persons pay bribes. The markedly rapid economic growth in Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Keralam and poor growth in Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and many others in the north east are under the same central government dispensation, sharply pointing to differences in the quality of business leadership in the two groups. ‘Big business’ here run betting shops, supermarkets, hospitals, import and market household equipment, banks and insurance companies and, most ambitiously maintain construction companies. (In the widely watched IPL cricket matches 2026, Sri Lanka advertised regularly a Betting Centre!) Tourism in this country is the business of small-scale enterprises with low productivity. The ubiquitous kade with a stock-in-trade of less than one hundred thousand rupees, borrowed from a relative or a friend, is a sign of rampant unemployment and not of budding entrepreneurship. When you go to consult a doctor in a private hospital in Colombo and wait endless hours, count the number of men and women employees idling, supervised by a proportionately large number of idling supervisors. Where are the large-scale manufacturing and service companies, selling the world over, where economies of scale abound in the 21^st century? So far as I recall, there has been no Initial Public Offering (IPO) of shares in the Colombo Stock Market during the last 7 years. Nor have multinational companies established here any large factories or offices.

Is the air we breathe deathly to enterprise?

by Usvatte-aratchi

Features

A Requiem for Keir Starmer rule

Published

14 hours ago

2026/06/25

Sahan Weerasooriya

Starmer

By the time Sir Keir Rodney Starmer resigned, polls showed that he had become the least popular Labour Prime Minister in living memory. His fall was all the more striking because his political beginnings had once suggested a very different trajectory. As a teenager in the Labour Party Young Socialists, and later as editor of the Marxist journal Socialist Alternatives, he had stood firmly on the radical left. As a human rights lawyer he opposed the illegal invasion of Iraq, earning a reputation for principle and moral clarity.

It was this early radicalism that his supporters later weaponised, presenting him as a unifying leftwing figure in the aftermath of the coup against the Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn. The right-wing of Labour, having spent years undermining Corbyn (including through a coordinated campaign that framed him, falsely, as anti-Semitic) found in Starmer a vessel through which they could reclaim the party while reassuring the membership that continuity with the Corbyn surge remained intact.

In his resignation speech, Starmer claimed to have inherited a politically, morally and financially bankrupt Labour Party. Yet the record shows that Corbyn had revived the party’s grassroots, drawing tens of thousands of new members back to a party embodying the tradition of Keir Hardie. The oligarchy closed ranks against this leftist heavyweight, using Starmer and the Labour right wing as their weapon. Starmer’s “Changed Labour” was not a renewal but a repudiation, embracing the very Thatcherite revisionism that had hollowed Labour out in the first place.

A Britain battered by decades of neoliberal restructuring formed the backdrop to Starmer’s rise. The cumulative effects of Maggie “milk-snatcher” Thatcher’s programme, deepened by Blair, Cameron, May, and Johnson, combined with the convulsions of Brexit to produce a profound economic, social, and political crisis. The Conservative Party imploded under the weight of its own contradictions. Starmer, offering managerial calm, an a Corbyn-lite manifesto, rode the wave of Tory collapse to a landslide victory.

But once in office, he revealed himself as a Blairite in sombre tones: a Thatcherite in Labour clothing. Within weeks he slashed winter fuel payments for pensioners, inaugurating a harsh antiworkingclass agenda. He embraced the Israeli government even as it carried out genocide in Gaza. The former human rights lawyer now used antiterror legislation to suppress dissent, particularly protests against the genocide. His immigration rhetoric, invoking an “island of strangers,” echoed the poisonous cadences of Enoch Powell.

Throughout his premiership he remained pofaced, showing little emotion even when forced into humiliating Uturns by public outrage. He displayed no visible sorrow at the mass killing of children in Gaza. Only at the prospect of losing office did he appear moved. He was, in the words of Saki, a man with “the soul of a meringue,” a mediocrity whose obedience to the oligarchic class and to Zionist backers embodied what Hannah Arendt called the banality of evil. His legacy – and that of the Tories who preceded him – is a nation distrustful of politicians of whatever hue, open to the pseudo-anti-elite, deception of the billionaire-backed racist far-right

His resignation leaves Britain at a crossroads – will it follow the fascistic path of Nigel Farage’s Reform Party, or will it go down the green-red road of Zach Polanski and Corbyn? Even replacing Starmer with the newly-elected Andy Burnham will only provide more-of-the-same Tory policies – Burnham went on record saying his first foreign visit as Prime Minister would be to Israel. These are the same policies that created a visceral hatred of Starmer and opened the gates for Reform’s surge.

When news of his resignation broke, a friend told this writer that the one who had engineered the exit of Jeremy Corbyn had been unable to complete two years in office. He added, ‘Rajakam kalath kalakam palade”-– even if you reign, your deeds will bear consequences.

And, so ends the Starmer era, not with the dignity of a statesman, but with the hollow thud of a project built on betrayal, opportunism, and the abandonment of the very principles he once claimed to uphold.

by Vinod Moonesinghe