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UK government does not care about public opinion: Activist

British Prime Minister Theresa May and US President Donald Trump speak during a press conference at the White House January 27, 2017 in Washington, DC. (Photo by AFP)

The British government has rejected a petition to cancel a state visit by US President Donald Trump. Press TV has asked political activist and commentator, Shabbir Hassanally, to shed more light on why London paid no heed to the petition signed by more than 1.8 million Britons.

Hassanally says he doesn’t find it surprising that Trump’s state visit to the UK is still in place, because the British government has never really cared about public demand.

“If you cast your mind back to 2002 when there was a demonstration of over two million people in London opposing the invasion of Iraq, this was completely ignored. So while in a way we are given this illusion that we live within a democracy, this really is not the case. We are living in a bureaucracy where you have very thin sort of group of rich and powerful oligarchs who run the show,” Hassanally told Press TV.

He argued that the whole Brexit palaver has already created a very difficult situation for the government, which means Britain is not going to prevent someone like Donald Trump from coming to the country because that will jeopardize any future deals and trade concessions.

The activist also opined that the British government is going to be “very weak” and “half-hearted” in the way it conducts any negotiations due to the fact that it is composed of people who were against the Brexit from the beginning.

He noted that Theresa May is not qualified to be the prime minister and was imposed by the governing Conservative party.

Hassanally further maintained that the United States and Britain have a special relationship which he described as a type of “Pax Americana” where essentially Washington encourages London to do certain things on its behalf and sometimes uses it as a “scapegoat.”

“So Britain is the lapdog of America which is very sad because England should be a country in its own right, the people should have their rights and opinion. But the lawmakers and the politicians are weak and do not have the backbone to stand up against anyone,” he said in conclusion.


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