A Financial Times reader has nailed it with their response to Theresa May condemning people who identify as “citizens of the world.”
May caused controversy when she told The Tory Party Conference last week: “If you believe you’re a citizen of the world, you’re a citizen of nowhere. You don’t understand what the very word ‘citizenship’ means.”
Henry Mance, one of the paper’s political correspondents, tweeted a picture of a letter in Monday’s paper, from Londoner Jem Eskenazi, a “self-confessed citizen of the world”.
The letter reads:
“Anybody with an ounce of intelligence understands that climate change, pollution or epidemics know no frontiers, that extreme poverty in one region has stability implications for the whole world; that terrorism is a global problem with global solutions; are not started by citizens of the world but narrow-minded people with a blind belief of their superiority, that some of the greatest minds in any society are descendants of immigrants and refugees.”
“I do understand very well what citizenship is, Mrs May,” Eskenazi writes.
“It is to have a balanced view of the interests of your family, your neighbourhood, your town, your country and your world.”
Eskenazi adds that nearly half of Britons agree with the statement that they are more a “global citizen” than a citizen of their country.
“You have told us we are citizens of nowhere. And this from the pulpit that says ‘A country that works for everyone’,” the letter concludes.