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No, it is not that the ineffectual London Mayor Sadiq Khan does not know. Nor is it that the politically ‘wounded’ Labour Party Leader Jeremy Corbyn is unaware that Sri Lanka’s Sinhala and Tamil communities resident in the UK and elsewhere celebrate the same New Year each April.

But the fact that Labour grandees persist in wishing only the Tamil community for a new year that is celebrated by both the Sinhala majority and the Tamil minority is clear proof that Labour’s claim to be non-racist is but a façade that is gradually been pulled apart to display the real face of Labour.

Sadiq Khan: New Year greeting only for Tamils

The current quarrels in the party over the practice of racism, particularly anti-Semitism, is likely to be investigated by independent bodies which could well expose further Labour’s partiality to some ethnic groups while denigrating and targeting others as has been coming to light.

London Mayor Sadiq Khan greeted only the Tamil community at New Year earlier this month, as though others who celebrated the same event did not deserve Khan’s ‘weighty’ wishes.

This pompous politician seemed to think that his words of wisdom should not be wasted on others who also live and work in London and celebrate the Sinhala and Tamil New Year.

He quoted two words in Tamil — as did Corbyn — in a show of spurious bon homie that might mislead many Tamils but not the educated and professional classes quite accustomed to the false and deceptive ways of political mediocrities like some of our own.

Labour is no longer the respected party it used to be. More and more it is earning the reputation of a racist party.  Mayor Khan’s partiality for the Tamil community without a word of greeting to the Sinhala residents in the UK is further proof the party is without a steady hand on the tiller.

It is bad enough that Labour is becoming shaky but its annual benediction to the Tamil community in the last decade or more shows that its racist face is increasingly beginning to show.

Certainly if the mayor wants to wish the Tamil community, which has made worthwhile contributions to British society, that is his prerogative. But surely it does not cost his official coffer a brass farthing, as the old saying goes, to wish the Sinhala community at the same time.

If Khan can’t make this simple gesture or stubbornly refuses to do so then it is time that he was taught some elementary lessons in civilised behaviour. For when he sent out greetings he was doing so as the mayor, not as some stray individual.

Quite rightly Sri Lanka’s High Commissioner in the UK, Manisha Gunasekera, reportedly wrote to Mayor Khan pointing to the error of his ways, if one might put it so. That communication to Khan was said to have been followed with a letter to Labour Party leader Corbyn who gushingly repeated the mayor’s words with two words in Tamil.

British Foreign Office Minister Mark Field who oversees Sri Lanka was far more civilised and balanced in extending his greetings to Sinhala and Tamil communities everywhere and wishing them not only a prosperous and joyous year ahead but also a peaceful one. Minister Field said it was time to “bring together communities and celebrate our common values”.

While Minister Field was advocating the coming together of Sri Lanka’s communities, Corbyn and Khan were encouraging divisiveness by addressing only the Tamil community.

This is said to be one issue that High Commissioner Gunasekera underlined in her communications to the two Labourites. Had their messages been addressed to both communities celebrating New Year instead of only the Tamil community, the message would have conveyed the sense of unity and co-existence which the Sinhala and Tamil New Year represents.

Labour’s exclusive message, however, adds to the party’s current contretemps where it has been branded racist. In fact, Labour could face a formal human rights probe after the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) raised concerns the party “may have unlawfully discriminated against people because of their ethnicity and religious beliefs.” In a statement last month, the watchdog said it was “considering” using its enforcement powers.

Why the Labour Party keeps wishing only the Tamil community seems obvious. It is a cheap political ploy played out each year to keep the Tamils beholden to Labour politicians for taking up their case in parliament and other fora.

This is a simple example of Labour politicians playing to the Tamil community for ephemeral electoral advantage. This annual homage to the Tamils for the “wonderful contribution” they make to London is the kind of hyperbolic rubbish that politicians with nothing worthwhile to say resort to.

Those who have followed the parliamentary debates initiated by Labour MPs might well remember the kind of hogwash that flows through those debates. It is not uncommon to hear Labour’s vociferous women MPs utter earth- shattering allegations against Sri Lanka.

But they cannot produce incontrovertible evidence to buttress these accusations except say these tales were conveyed by their constituents. I dare say some of them could be true and some others embellished.

One can remember Labour MPs climbing pro-LTTE platforms in Hyde Park, Trafalgar Square and elsewhere and bursting the eardrums of passers-by with their turgid rhetoric.

Listening to the Corbyns and Khans of this world, one is tempted to rewrite Macbeth’s words and say: “They are tales told by some idiots, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”

During my time at the High Commission, one was often confronted with issues connected with the All Party Parliament Group for Tamils (APPG-T) and other organisations that indulged in highly biased, one-sided and inflammatory remarks often in support of the LTTE, which had been declared a foreign terrorist organisation under a year 2000 British law.

To let them pass unanswered or to respond meekly to these deliberate untruths and dangerous concoctions would have been to allow shameless mendacity to rule over truth and carefully distilled misinformation.

What has happened in more recent years is that the cussed racism they practise behind a set of illusory principles such as a declared faith in multiculturalism, anti-racism and human rights, is often punctured by actions that have been and are challenged by groups within the party itself.

They see Corbyn’s trade union Lefties pushing him to take increasingly extreme positions and so would like to see Corbyn deposited in the dustbin and Labour return to the principles it once upheld and fought for in the political battlefield.

The on-going trouble in the Labour Party over the anti-Semitism displayed by some party figures and Corbyn’s inclination to bury his head in the party’s sand and ignore the goings-on that have discredited Labour is causing serious concerns within it.

The fact that the Labour Party set about establishing the All Party Parliament Group for Tamils when almost all other groups developed close relations with countries rather than racial groups is more evidence of Labour’s growing racist inclinations and its desire to put down others using parliamentary privileges.

For instance, there is the All Party Parliamentary Group for Sri Lanka, which was originally established by Lord Naseby. That the Labour Party moved to set up a parliamentary group to support the Tamil community is evidence of its partiality for a particular community and its political motivation.

It is not surprising the Labour Party’s racist proclivities have come under official scrutiny.

The Jewish community in the UK like in some other western countries is a powerful political, economic and financial lobby. Right now Labour is not only facing internal dissension but seeing some of its MPs delinking themselves from a party that has lost its moorings.

All the more reason then why Labour is clinging to racial groups that would provide electoral support as a quid pro quo for pressing the Tamil ‘cause’ in parliament and other political platforms.

In doing so and engaging in trumpet- blowing is to sow discord among communities as Mayor Khan is trying to do when what Britain needs today great social cohesion and a sense of togetherness. This is dangerous politics since we know Labour’s divisive practices.

Space does not permit a more detailed look at Labour’s racist bent not only in the last few years but from the latter half of the 1960s when Labour’s Jim Callaghan introduced racist legislation to stop Asians from Africa — particularly Kenya and Uganda — settling in the UK, though many of them had British documents to prove their residential credentials. British cabinet papers released under the 30-year rule showed Labour’s duplicity.