Is Britain bankrupt?                    Photo courtesy

"Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when there is the log in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye."

So the English Standard Version of the Bible quotes Jesus Christ teaching his disciples in the seventh chapter verses three to five of the Gospel of Matthew.

The teaching immanent in these verses challenges anyone who is concerned with the strained bilateral relations between Zimbabwe and the UK to draw some lessons from the recent official announcement on Sky News by the United Kingdom's Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Gideon Oliver Osborne, that Her Majesty's government "has run out of money because all the money was spent in the good years."

In all fairness, the Chancellor's announcement confirms that the British government has now descended from the economic and financial high pedestal from which, as a purported world leader, it 'schooled' other 'lesser' countries in the world on how best to run their economic and financial matters.

With the economic and financial pride purged through getting broke, the UK has lost her political clout too, particularly in Zimbabwe and Africa in general.

Her Majesty's government must first take the economic and financial log out of its own eye, so that it can see clearly to take the economic and financial speck out of Zimbabwe's or any other country's eye.

The British Empire has now fallen, with a broke Treasury any claim to world economic and financial leadership by the UK is hypocritical and other nations should treat that hypocrisy with the contempt it deserves.

Chancellor George Osborne rightly told The Daily Telegraph that "all the money was spent in the good years."

However, the frank chancellor did not tell the media that the US, India, Singapore, Nigeria, Kenya, Zambia, Malawi, Zimbabwe and many other former British colonies sweated profusely to make great economic and financial contributions to Her Majesty's Treasury. The wealth that was stolen from those colonies sustained the lives of the British citizens throughout the "good years."

The independence of the former British colonies has over the years cut off the flow of colonial money into Her Majesty's Treasury.

One hopes that Chancellor Osborne, who changed his first name to George because he admired his grandfather's war heroism, will not encourage his government counterparts to engage in full time war with the former British colonies in order to fill up HM Treasury with 'blood money.'

It is easier for those who do not live in glass houses to throw stones; it is equally easier for a broke UK to start wars that destabilise the economies of victim countries with the aim of looting natural resources.

The practice of neo-colonialism and the imposition of sanctions on other nations for selfish reasons have failed to improve the economic and financial matters of the UK in the 21st century so far, it may well be that the 21st century holds no money for the British if they do not quickly bin their colonial pride and change their big brother mentality.

What use is a big brother who is skint anyway? The world has changed so much so that even the smallest nation on this globe worth its salt cannot smile at being economically and financially bossed around when it knows that might is not right but right is might. And when might gets broke, lessons abound and right prospers.

Neo-colonialism and the sanctions weapon have managed to upset the economic and financial matters of the victim countries to the extent of justifiably whipping up anti-British sentiments that make it difficult for the UK to engage in win-win bilateral trade relations with her former colonies aimed at bringing money into the now empty British Treasury.

The UK did not get broke the very day that chancellor Osborne said "Britain is skint"; it did not get broke the same day that Liam Byrne left a note for David Laws telling him the truth: "Dear Chief Secretary, I'm afraid to tell you there's no money left."

The country has been broke for quite some time now. That the UK has been broke for quite some time could help us explain why the former British premier Tony Blair and the former US president George Bush had to manufacture a mammoth lie that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction to justify their invasion of Iraq.

The size of the loot that could be hauled into HM Treasury from the hapless oil-rich Iraq had been carefully calibrated to far outweigh the fallout that would ensue when the ordinary British and American citizens together with other countries discovered that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction after all.

Gangsterism that resulted in the commission of war crimes and crimes against humanity in Iraq, Afghanistan and most recently Libya has emptied HM Treasury instead of refilling it with money; this is a bitter lesson for the British to learn.

However, it is important for African opposition political parties to draw the lesson that the British opposition political parties did not call for an Egypt-style revolution to boot Prime Minister David Cameron and Chancellor Osborne out of office because the British Treasury is now officially empty.

Concerned British citizens are instead asking themselves how they got to be broke and how they can pull their country out of that bankruptcy because the truth is that the empty British Treasury needs to be filled with money, not blame-games and conspiracy theories.

Another lesson African opposition political parties can learn from the fact that Britain is now skint is that dependence on foreign funding for political survival in Africa is a threat to democracy in that when the foreign funders get broke, the funded political parties are most likely to get broke too.

The African Diaspora working in the UK will most likely learn the importance and urgency of investing in their home countries so that when things get unbearable out there, they will have money to fall back on.

By Dancase B. Gideon.

The author is a  freelance writer based in Harare, Zimbabwe.