Britain is following in the footsteps of Africa’s former failed states

Kenya

  ‘In the past months the people of Uganda have been following with sorrow the alarming economic crisis befalling on Britain,’ Uganda’s President Idi Amin telegrammed the Queen in 1973. ‘The sad fact is that it is the ordinary British citizen who is suffering the most… I’m sending a cargo ship full of bananas.’ Back then Fleet Street hooted with laughter at this African buffoon trying to patronise the United Kingdom and its leaders. Yet I wonder what Idi Amin would be able to say about Britain and its leaders today. When I first started out as an FT

Many African political systems today would never tolerate the things that are going on in Britain

stringer in Dar es Salaam in the 1980s, we all knew that independence from foreign rule was the most cherished goal for every African, even if, in the short term, people had to suffer for their freedom. We also seemed to agree that most of the UK’s former colonies had gained independence with decent democratic systems in place, based on the Westminster parliamentary model. The wigs, the Speaker, the mace and green benches — we had these all across Africa. There was a lovely sense of Commonwealth continuity. When things swiftly went wrong, pundits like me generally described this in terms of the breakdown of the Westminster model. Speakers threw their wigs away and ceased to be impartial, party members crossed the floor without seeking re-election, and indeed the majority of MPs refused to face voters in the polls, remaining in the House only to cling on to power, serving not the people, but their own selfish interests. In time these travesties of democracy collapsed into dictatorships, tin-pot regimes, banana republics and finally, failed states. From where I stand, after a lifetime on the Africa beat, I see that many of the political outrages I covered on this continent in our sad past are becoming the daily norm in British politics today.