Although the United Kingdom and the United States have been described as two people divided by a common language, there are some terms in American English that we can all agree on. One of those terms is the name of ‘Benedict Arnold’, used by Americans to describe someone who behaves in a treasonous manner. The term comes from the American Revolutionary War general Benedict Arnold who famously switched sides from the American one to the British one. Arnold, whom both Britons and Americans can recognise, especially at this now great historical distance, was a traitor to the American Revolutionary cause that he had pledged to serve.
When I saw that London’s Mayor Sadiq Khan was off to Brussels to whine at the EU about the need for Londoners to be given ‘associate citizenship’ of the EU, the name ‘Benedict Arnold’ sprung to mind. This is because it is indeed a form of treason for Khan to go behind the backs of a government that is in the process of withdrawing from the EU and to treat the majority vote of Britons to leave the European Union as if it was something that didn’t matter and should be put aside.
People who know the story of Arnold quite rightly and indeed dispassionately condemn Benedict Arnold for selling out his cause for £20k to the British government during the US Revolutionary War. Equally those of us who know that Britain should be presenting a united front against the EU in negotiations, should also condemn Khan for scuttling over to Brussels doing who knows what damage at a time when the last thing the nation needs is this pint sized pillock sticking his oar in.
Khan is doing his utmost to sell out Britain in Brussels, to interfere with the process of withdrawal in whatever way he can. This is not the conduct we in the UK should be expecting of the mayor of our capital city, these are the actions of an arrogant, democracy denying scumbag. Khan has no power and no democratic mandate to run around pretending that he is some sort of ‘world leader’, but that is what he is doing. In fact this grandstanding by Khan is a distraction from what this failed mayor should be doing and that is sorting out the massive problems of crime and violence that have plagued London since he became mayor.
Ever since the Referendum to leave the EU took place in 2016, Khan has been whinging and whining about Brexit. He has been acting as if London was not a part of the UK and had nothing to do with Brexit despite the country voting to leave. He’s been an utter anti democrat over the issue of Brexit. Khan is not acting on behalf of the Londoners in places like Barking and Dagenham and Havering which have borne the brunt of much unwanted immigraton, who voted leave, but instead is acting for foreigners and not Britons, and the London metro-Left bubble rather than the nation as a whole.
Surely Sadiq Khan is truly London’s very own version of Benedict Arnold and hopefully just as with General Arnold, his name will become for future generations a byword for treachery and he will end up as hated as Arnold is.
But, there is one big difference between Benedict Arnold and Sadiq Khan. There was no way that the Americans could hold Arnold to account for his treachery and he avoided the fate of execution that befell Arnold’s associates. Khan on the other hand can be made to account for his treachery and it can be done via the ballot box. Later this year there is a mayoral election and although Khan is going all out to encourage the growth of the all too easily corruptible postal votes, if enough decent Londoners get out and vote against him, it might overpower the Islamic, foreign and metro-Left voter base that Khan relies on.
Khan has done some awful things whilst in power. He’s presided over a city that due in large part to his policies has become a violent shithole in those areas that are not in the central zone. Stabbings, shootings and other violent crimes seem to becoming more common under the reign of a mayor who seems to do little but fiddle whilst London burns.
I’m not at all surprised to see Khan scurrying around making nice and fawning over eurocrats that are to be quite frank the UK’s opponents, but that doesn’t mean that myself or others are not disgusted by his treachery. It’s time that decent Londoners got off their arses and voted this turbulent and traitorous tosser out of office. If he gets back in, either by fair means or foul, then London, already a crumbling and dangerous place, will get worse. To save London and to save the nation much embarrassment, London’s Benedict Arnold needs to go.
Is it true that Barnier had to get down on his knees so he could look Khan’t in the eye?
LOL Well I suppose it’s better than having to get down into the gutter to be on the same level as Khan’s morality
There’s no treachery in serving Britain: Benedict Arnold started a traitor, serving in the rebel army 1775–80, but saw the light and came back to us; and the parable of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11–32) instructs us we must forgive—Benedict, having been lost, was then found. He also did some decent work, such as his attacks on Richmond and New London.
Very likely his decision to return home was due to marrying the loyal American Peggy Shippen (not the first time a marriage has changed someone’s loyalties, although in this case to our benefit—we should be warier than we are of people marrying outside of their nationality).
Of course, greater respect is due to those Americans who never strayed from their loyalty, such as Robert Rogers, of Rogers’ Rangers fame (Seven Years’ War), who formed first the Queen’s Rangers and then the King’s Rangers during the rebellion.
We’re not Americans and should not adopt their mythology. There were many reasons for the American rebellion and not one was noble: northerners were upset by the 1763 Proclamation Line denying the Americans further westward expansion at the Indians’ expense; southern plantation-owners saw court cases such as Smith v Brown & Cooper (1705) and Somerset v Stewart (1772) gradually ending slavery, and realised the slaves would be eventually freed, preventing them from importing cheap labour (the American working class be damned); both north and south were unhappy with HMG’s toleration towards the Roman religion of the French Canadians finding themselves under British rule after the Seven Years’ War.
If Khan had been around in 1775, he’d be with the rebels treacherously fighting (well, safely far from the front exhorting others to fight) against his King and Country.
Whilst I agree that there are two ways to see Arnold, he did take money to sell out the side that he’d pledged to serve. I’m a bit of a ‘yankeephile’ so I do see things somewhat differently. I agree with you about Khan, if it was a case of fighting for Britain or fighting for our enemies, it’s likely that he would side with the enemy, something he’s shown he’s capable of doing through his machinations with the EU.
Traitors and spies likely leave many of us with more straightforward loyalties uncomfortable; but presumably few loyal Britons would condemn Eamon Collins, the former IRA terrorist, who left and exposed their true nature at every opportunity, not least his 1997 Killing Rage (for which exposure he was brutally done to death in 1999); nor Sean O’Callaghan, another former IRA terrorist who became a Garda spy, then also publicised their true nature whenever opportunity afforded (including his 1998 The Informer). Whether all their later work against the IRA sufficiently atones for their parts in the deaths of loyal Ulstermen, I leave to God; but if their sins were greater than mine, their later good works were also greater.
And if I welcome Collins and O’Callaghan home, I must welcome any similarly coming home.
There is certainly much to admire about America; but there is also much myth, contradicted by reality once one reads up on it; and their government at least can have quite a nasty side.
Some recommended reading for a more pro-British perspective on the American rebellion:
Contemporary accounts:
‘Candidus’ (James Chalmers) Plain Truth, Addressed to the Inhabitants of America, containing Remarks on a late Pamphlet, intitled Common Sense. 1776.
Johnson, Samuel. Taxation No Tyranny. 1775 (online).
Oliver, Peter. Origin & Progress of the American Rebellion: A Tory View. 1781.
Stedman, C. The History of the Origin, Progress, and Termination of the American War. 1794. 2 vols.
Later histories:
Bicheno, Hugh. Rebels and Redcoats: The American Revolutionary War. 2003 (accompaniment to Richard Holmes’s TV series Rebels & Redcoats: How Britain Lost America).
Fisher, Sydney. The True History of the American Revolution. 1902.
Harvey, Robert. A Few Bloody Noses: The American War of Independence. 2001.
Hibbert, Christopher. Redcoats and Rebels: The American Revolution through British Eyes. 1990.
Scotti, Anthony. Brutal Virtue: The Myth and Reality of Banastre Tarleton. 2002.
Since the 1783 Treaty of Paris ended hostilities between the American rebels and Britain, the new nation was in a virtual Cold War with Britain until ‘The Great Rapprochement’ at 19th Century’s close.
Apart from the ‘Hot’ War of 1812–14, it almost went hot again on other occasions: e.g. 1818, in an unprovoked invasion of Spanish Florida (First Seminole War), future president Andrew Jackson—who yet (dis)graces the $20 bill—executed two Britons, Robert Ambrister and Alexander Arbuthnot; e.g. the 1838 invasion of Canada; e.g. the 1859 ‘Pig War’ that led to a 10-year armed standoff between British and American forces on San Juan Island; e.g. the Venezuela Boundary Dispute, 1895–99.
Further reading: Tuffnell, S. (2011) “Uncle Sam is to be sacrificed”: Anglophobia in late nineteenth-century politics and culture. American Nineteenth Century History, 12(1), 77–99.
Since then, the ‘Special Relationship’ has been very one-sided, from USG’s shutting Britain out of the Atomic Bomb programme in violation of verbal and written agreements, to refusing to extradite IRA terrorists or shut off IRA funding from NORAID(*). They stabbed us in the back at Suez, when USG sided with the Soviets to back an Egyptian dictator over their allies, Britain and France, a mere 3 years after all three countries had fought side by side in Korea and barely 10 years after fighting against Germany and Japan, threatening to crash Sterling (and, presumably unknown to us, even contemplating military action against us(†)). Later, USG pressured us to accede to Icelandic demands during the ‘Cod War’, Johnny-Come-Lately Iceland more important to USG than the ally of three wars. At least 44 dead British servicemen from U.S. friendly fire since 1945—and while combat is confusing, sometimes the Yanks don’t even seem to be trying:
(Meek, J. (2010, October). Iraq war logs: How friendly fire from US troops became routine. Guardian.)
Their latest humiliation of us their refusal to extradite the killer of Harry Dunn.
Not that it’s only Brits who get stitched by USG. They brought the world to the brink of destruction over Soviet missiles in Cuba pointed at the US mainland—placed there in response to US missiles in Turkey pointing at the Soviet motherland. They didn’t give a toss about Soviet missiles pointed at Britain, France and West Germany—we could all die in nuclear fire as far as they were concerned; but threaten Washington and it’s Armageddon Time—placing Europe in a position of facing ‘annihilation without representation’(‡).
They deposed their Vietnamese “””ally””” Ngo Dinh Diem, resulting in his murder along with his brother Ngo Dinh Nhu; then after devastating that country and Cambodia, they cut and run, leaving their former “””allies””” to the Communists—see the poignant letter of Cambodian prime minister Sirik Matak (later executed by the Khmer Rouge) to the departing US ambassador.
Now USG refuses to comply with the Iraqi parliament’s demand they leave Iraq, leaving it questionable if US forces in Iraq are still there to support the Iraqi government that so many Americans died to install, and are not now occupation forces(§). And contemplating the mess USG (directly or indirectly) have made of much of the Middle East, US foreign policy resembles nothing more than a medieval chevauchée, leaving a wake of death, misery and destruction.
In Bernard Lewis’s words, ‘America is harmless as an enemy and treacherous as a friend.’
(* Even some within USG started to worry about the US being seen as an ‘exporter of terrorism’, see: CIA Red Cell Memorandum on United States “exporting terrorism”, 2 Feb 2010, WikiLeaks.)
(† Kyle, Keith. Suez: Britain’s End of Empire in the Middle East. 1991. I.B. Tauris, 2011. 412; Calhoun, Daniel F. Hungary and Suez, 1956: An Exploration of Who Makes History. University Press of America, 1991. 381.)
(‡ Arnold Toynbee, quoted in Gatzke, Hans W. The Present in Perspective. 1957. 3rd ed., 1965. 181.)
(§ Not legally—yet: Harb, A. (2020, January). At what point do US troops in Iraq become an occupation force? Middle East Eye.)
Much of the SJW cancer comes from America—some of it is cultural (rooted in USG-funded academe), and the countries most resistant to SJWism are those where English is least spoken (Japan, Eastern Europe, etc.); but some of it comes from USG directly, see Estonia: Embassy’s Efforts To Promote Racial Tolerance, 16 Jun 2006, WikiLeaks.
tbf, at least as much criticism should be levelled at various British governments(*) for not recognising how ruthless and unsentimental USG is in pursuit of what it perceives as its interests. In terms of the Prisoner’s Dilemma (Game Theory), we are playing an always forgiving Nice strategy to our opponent’s Nasty; similar to how it’s been said of Chamberlain that he was a gentleman and treated others like gentlemen, not realising that he was dealing with thugs.
(* Wilson deserves credit for declining USG’s generous invitation to get our lads killed in their Vietnam slaughterfest; and Mrs T. for taking back the Falklands and damn USG’s chums in the Argentinean junta.)