Editorial - Rewiring Britain

Andy Burnham is set to be Britains next Prime Minister. In a speech this week, delivered not from Westminster but from Manchester, he pledged to "rewire" the country, promising the biggest transfer of power out of Whitehall in modern times. His optimism and sense of purpose are clearly welcome after years of drift. But if the rewiring is to mean anything, it cannot stop at Britains shores. It must extend to a foreign policy that has grown anaemic, and to the countrys approach to Sri Lanka in particular.

For too long, UK policy has amounted to appeasement of Colombo. Successive British governments, Labour and Conservative alike, have indulged each regime in Colombo, offering engagement without conditions and patience without end. It is fair to say that this policy has yielded nothing. There have been no key foreign policy wins, no progress towards a political solution on the island, and no accountability for the atrocities committed against the Tamil people. Each new Sri Lankan government has been greeted in London with a tepid "wait and see" approach, and each has proven the same. The latest, under Anura Kumara Dissanayake, has now amply demonstrated that it is no different from those before it. Sinhala Buddhist colonisation of the Tamil homeland runs unabated, majoritarianism goes unchecked, and accountability for some of the gravest atrocities of this century continues to be denied.

The cost of that denial is not confined to the island. As figures from the UN humanitarian chief Tom Fletcher, to Palestinians, and even Israelis themselves have acknowledged, the failure to atone for the massacres at Mullivaikkal paved the way for what followed elsewhere, from Gaza to Ukraine. A world that watched tens of thousands of Tamils slaughtered in 2009 and exacted no price taught every would-be perpetrator the same lesson: that mass atrocities can be waited out, and that the international communitys attention will move on before its resolve arrives. Impunity, once granted, travels.

There are several on Labours front bench and in Burnhams potential cabinet who know this history well. The appointment of a foreign secretary will be an early and telling decision, with familiar names such as Wes Streeting and David Miliband in the mix. Both have engaged extensively with the Tamil people. But Milibands record is a darker one. He was foreign secretary in 2009, when the previous Labour government held power, and when Britain did shockingly little to halt the slaughter it watched unfold in real time. This newspaper documented that failure as it happened, and British Tamils have not forgotten it.

What would a rewired approach look like? It is not a call that would strain the public finances. It asks only that Britain do what it claims to stand for. Widening sanctions on Sri Lankan war criminals, several of whom continue to travel and lobby freely. Explicitly linking trade to human rights benchmarks, so that access to British markets is no longer decoupled from conduct. Officially recognising the genocide that took place, as parliamentarians and legislatures elsewhere have begun to do. Pursuing prosecutions through universal jurisdiction, for which the evidence has long been gathered. And finally taking concrete action towards an international accountability mechanism, rather than deferring, year after year, to promises of domestic processes that Colombo designs precisely so that they will fail.

None of this is radical. It is how a forward-thinking Britain acts. At a period of turbulence in Washington, when the world is looking for states willing to lead on principle, meaningful action on Sri Lanka would project exactly the global Britain that Burnhams rhetoric promises: a force for good, acting not out of appeasement but with purpose.

There is a further argument, and it is one Burnham has already made himself. He has spoken of devolving power within England, of handing more powers to mayors and local authorities, and of establishing a prime ministers office in Manchester, a "No 10 North" to serve as the nerve centre of a rewired Britain. "The days of Whitehall fighting the devolution of power into the regions and nations are over, for good," he declared.

It is a principle British Tamils will recognise instantly, for they and their kin on the island have advocated it for generations, only to watch Colombo wage war rather than share power. If the concentration of power in Whitehall has failed the north of England, the concentration of power in Colombo has done immeasurably worse to the North-East. A leader who believes that those closest to a place govern it best cannot, with any consistency, look away when that same demand is made by Eelam Tamils.

Burnham has an opportunity to reset a failed policy and to align Britains conduct abroad with the principles he preaches at home. The rewiring he promises must reach Colombo.

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Illustration by Keera Ratnam.