AS the Conservative party election of a replacement for Boris Johnson nears its September deadline, an outline of a future Britain is emerging. Whatever Britain that emerges post-September, it will certainly not deserve the moniker "Great".
Neither will it be "Global Britain", a label much loved by Johnson. "Insular" may just be the right adjective. The future premier is the reason why.
Foreign Secretary Liz Truss, the frontrunner in the Conservative party leadership, is extolling policies that are worrying people in Britain and the rest of the world. Remember what happens in Britain doesn't just stay in Britain. Hence the reason for this Leader.
Start with British worries caused by Truss's latest fad: antisemitism in the civil service. Before we go there, let's get antisemitism right. Antisemitism isn't just anti-Jewish. It is anti-Arab, too. It is puzzling to think that Britain, the nation that gave birth to a world-renowned historian like Arnold Toynbee, doesn't know history.
Here is the empire-strikes-back education for Britons who do not know the meaning of the English word "antisemitism". Abraham had two sons, Ismail and Isaac (peace be upon them all). The Arabs are the descendants of the elder Ismail and the Jews the descendants of Isaac. Both are Semitic people.
Truss, like Johnson, is given to conflating antisemitism and Zionism. They aren't the same thing. The former is an attack on a race while the latter is a criticism of a dangerous ideology. One is wrong and the other is right. A future prime minister must know the difference.
Otherwise it will have grave consequences for Britain and the world. The occupant of 10 Downing Street can't think like the one on the Clapham omnibus. A prime minister and a passenger aren't the same thing.
Truss's foray into the civil service is puzzling. After all, she has been a minister for some eight years. Surely, as head of a division of the civil service for that many years, she would have spotted antisemitism before now.
Or, as one former civil servant there hinted at in a letter to The Guardian, is Truss setting up a straw man to be knocked down to please her Jewish sponsors? A British guess is as good as a Malaysian one.
As the writer suggests in the English daily, Truss will do better by levelling up Britain and conjuring up a Brexit dividend. To this, we add another must-do to the Truss list: get capitalism there to be more compassionate.
Truss will do better, too, by recognising that antisemitism is not just a problem for the Jews. It is a problem for the Arabs, too. Admit it or not, Britain created the Palestinian problem.
To this day, it has remained the most intractable problem. Again, Britain is the cause. Truss is making it worse for the Palestinians by denying them even the right to protest the occupation of their land, let alone to rise up against the Israeli military.
If the Ukrainians can rise up against the invasion of their land, why can't the Palestinians? If her interview with the Jewish Chronicle is anything to go by, she has made a pledge with Israel: to eradicate antisemitism.
Worryingly, only the Jewish part of it. Truss will do well to recognise that the Palestinian problem is an equation. Solving for one side doesn't balance the equation at all.
