Trump says he wants to eliminate federal income tax. He should be taken seriously on this. Based on past experience, his view of how states should fund themselves could become the mainstream consensus before long.
A bit tough on the poorer states that vote Republican, and good for the wealthy States that vote Democrat.
How do you work that out? If the burden of taxation shifts from income tax to tariffs on imports, would the wealthy coastal states not pay the most?
The tariff would be paid by the importer, so distributed amongst the consumer population, but the richer states like California or New York would pay less income tax. There would be a net loss to poorer states like West Virginia or Alabama.
Do people in California and New York not consume more foreign goods than people in Alamaba?
Depends on the goods. The price of clothing would probably be a big issue in a state like Alabama.
An incentive to create jobs domestically to circumvent the tariff would benefit them. Cotton is still a big industry there.
To take the politics out of it for a moment: it's like watching Police Interceptors. "Which of several drunk idiots can be the most inarticulate? Whose syntax can be most mangled?"
Having seen - online and a couple times in person - the way people think they can behave around MPs….
One time was just outside Parliament where a protestor grabbed an MPs jacket and tried to pull them down. Prime for the “take the attackers hand in both of yours, rotate until it stops, brace, then rotate some more”.
The secret is to be a Lib Dem MP, then you live surrounded by nice well spoken people who go to Gail’s bakery. Simple.
It’s obvious from the reporting that the UK suffered a diplomatic defeat at the Commonwealth.
Reparations were not even on the agenda, so the UK has been “hijacked”. And despite Starmer’s pleading, it is not obvious at all the money is not to be discussed.
Starmer said none of the discussions at the summit had concerned money.
“Well, no figure,” Frederick Mitchell, the foreign minister of the Bahamas told BBC Radio’s Today programme on Saturday. “We’ll see what happens going forward.”
He said he hoped a report on the issue would follow, which nations would discuss in the future. Mitchell also mentioned the UK government’s decision in 2013 to recognise the torture of Kenyans by British colonial forces during the Mau Mau uprising, which resulted in a £20m payout. “I have no doubt …. that the arc of history always goes in the right direction,” he said.
The Commonwealth no longer does our bidding, and why should it? After all KC3 is Head of State for a number of the countries pursuing reparations too. Sure we could have thrown our toys out of the pram and refused to sign the declaration, but that pretty much would bang in the final nail in its coffin.
We cannot praise the democratic institutions and rule of law that we bequeathed to the Commonwealth, then refuse to respond to those governments. Either we left them something valid, or we did not.
I don’t think the Commonwealth should do the UK’s bidding. That would be bizarre.
I simply note the UK’s diplomatic defeat on this issue.
The last government created a precedent, it seems:
"Mitchell also mentioned the UK government’s decision in 2013 to recognise the torture of Kenyans by British colonial forces during the Mau Mau uprising, which resulted in a £20m payout."
When you are in a minority you are not going to get your way. I guess the issue is whether you then walk out or just play along knowing you cannot be forced to do anything you do not want to do.
You don't walk out. You just say "No. You must be joking!" and sit there. You certainly don't sign a declaration that opens the door. You refuse to sign. Simple.
That's pretty much the same as walking out. Basically, you leave without a communique. I suspect that is what a lot of previous UK governments would have done. This one chose not to grandstand. Unlike others on here, I don't see that as an act of treason. We decide whether the door opens. It's all in our hands.
If you welcome turning it into a political question domestically, then you shouldn't complain if the debate goes in a direction you don't like.
I would be very surprised if it becomes a big issue domestically. All the government will say is there will be no reparations. Some on the right will accuse the government of treason and wanting to dismantle the nation state and they will look ridiculous and the world will turn.
The government has already failed to say this in an unequivocal enough fashion. It's now on the agenda, like it or not.
If the right wants to focus on the UK potentially paying reparations for the next few years I will welcome that as they will make themselves look even more cut off from reality than they do already.
Even more so if they want to argue that the slaves should be grateful for all the kind benefits we gave them.
I have seen such absurdity argued by Republicans in the USA, so not surprised to see the same amongst their fellow travellers here.
David Lloyd George’s childhood cottage is to be “decolonised” with the help of funding from the Welsh Government.
The Liberal prime minister’s modest birthplace in rural Wales has been converted into a museum, which has been swept into plans to make his homeland “anti-racist”.
You get exercised by odd events. Removing artefacts from a Cadw building and you are outraged. Trying to overturn a free and fair election with a seditious violent coup and not so much as a whimper.
I just want to point out that when the Chagos Surrender happened and I went ape-shit on here, there was a lot of scoffing and “oh who cares it’s a tiny atoll you’ve never heard of before”
I responded that
1. I had definitely heard of it
2. The surrender was totally unnecessary and a strategic error of enormous proportions
And
3. One of the many reasons it was such a strategic error was that it would encourage all our enemies to take a run at us, perceiving us as weak and spineless with a stupid cowardly leader willing to yield to anything
Et voila
Indeed, there's no way that reparations or anything as stupid as that would be on the agenda had we not just paid billions to Mauritius to take the Chagos Islands off our hands. The Carribbean sense weakness and Starmer appointing reparations supporters like Lammy such high roles is another reason they know they can go for it and win. Starmer is a cuck.
Starmer should just have said “nah. Fuck off, I’m not signing that, it commits us to reparations”
But of course he’s incapable of showing backbone because he doesn’t have one, and deep down he agrees that Britain is evil and should pay
And that's the difference between him and Blair. Blair would have just laughed the whole discussion off and told the commonwealth nations to get back in their box because he fundamentally loved this country. Starmer very clearly doesn't, he sees us as part of the evil colonialist axis as so many lefties were indoctrinated to believe when they went to university by Marxist professors.
Could anyone imagine Margaret Thatcher, or even John Major signing it!
I don’t believe he’ll ever commit the UK to paying billions.
What he will do is offer some abject, and completely insincere, apology for slavery, before agreeing to pay symbolic reparations to governments who’ll stick the money in their offshore accounts.
That will set a precedent for anyone with a grudge against the UK to come calling.
One can imagine Cameron taking a similar line if he were PM now. Times have changed since the Thatcher era.
Osborne, yes. Cameron, I think not.
Impossible to imagine a British PM now suggesting, as Cameron did, that he was proud of the Empire. But that was only 2013.
The last 10 years have really been a roller coaster.
I think it's strange that as the world moves back towards the pre-1945 view that the strong do as they will, the weak as they must, our own leaders are in complete denial about it.
That’s the point I made yesterday about our increasingly Hobbesian world.
I don’t wish for Britain to surrender its long-standing support for international institutions, but there seems to be gross lack of realpolitik and, at the end of the day, simple self-belief.
The Empire to me a key battle-line, because it is an essential part of British experience 1600-1960. It’s impossible to imagine the UK without it.
And therefore a total repudiation and condemnation of it really calls into question whether the UK itself has any legitimacy.
Exactly, which is no doubt the agenda some secretly harbour.
Destroying the sense of the nation state makes it easier to be subsumed into a United States of Europe.
Absolute lunatic comment.
The end goal of the repudiation that I talk about is the end of Western order itself, to be replaced presumably by some breed of indigenous, socialist republics.
To the extent this aids any realistic geopolitical goal, it is China’s.
I think you're right about the overall view, I'm giving the Starmer view on why this is desirable. His destruction of the UK as a nation state of which we can be proud of is to ensure when we get asked again we will definitely say yes and it paves the way for European nations to be replaced by a United States of Europe.
The EU project is ambiguous because to some, it's the first stage towards a global federation, but to others, it's a vehicle for Europe to reassert itself in the world. Of course it could also be neither of these things and instead just be part of the problem contributing to Europe's decline.
Torture in the Mau Mau Uprising was against British law and cultural norms. It was deservedly a case for compensation.
Though I note no compensation has been provided by the Mau Mau to Britain for its various atrocities.
The vast majority of their victims were Kenyans, which is why the Kenyans banned the organisation for forty years after independence.
I'm not really disagreeing with either of you, but want to note that crimes by Mau Mau are a different question from abuse inflicted on Mau Mau prisoners by British Officials. Buggering, castrating and/or torturing a prisoner under your control is abuse, regardless of whatever is happening in the country outside your prison.
I can see no difference from prisoners in Ukraine who have been captured, and are castrated (we had a video of one case early in the war) or murdered. If said prisoners have committed crimes themselves, then that is a separate matter for a separate trial.
"These crimes were committed by British colonial officials and have gone unrecognised and unpunished for decades. They included castration, rape and repeated violence of the worst kind. Although they occurred many years ago, the physical and mental scars remain. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/06/uk-compensate-kenya-mau-mau-torture
To take the politics out of it for a moment: it's like watching Police Interceptors. "Which of several drunk idiots can be the most inarticulate? Whose syntax can be most mangled?"
Having seen - online and a couple times in person - the way people think they can behave around MPs….
One time was just outside Parliament where a protestor grabbed an MPs jacket and tried to pull them down. Prime for the “take the attackers hand in both of yours, rotate until it stops, brace, then rotate some more”.
The secret is to be a Lib Dem MP, then you live surrounded by nice well spoken people who go to Gail’s bakery. Simple.
Actually, the MP I saw being assaulted was a Lib Dem, IIRC
It’s obvious from the reporting that the UK suffered a diplomatic defeat at the Commonwealth.
Reparations were not even on the agenda, so the UK has been “hijacked”. And despite Starmer’s pleading, it is not obvious at all the money is not to be discussed.
Starmer said none of the discussions at the summit had concerned money.
“Well, no figure,” Frederick Mitchell, the foreign minister of the Bahamas told BBC Radio’s Today programme on Saturday. “We’ll see what happens going forward.”
He said he hoped a report on the issue would follow, which nations would discuss in the future. Mitchell also mentioned the UK government’s decision in 2013 to recognise the torture of Kenyans by British colonial forces during the Mau Mau uprising, which resulted in a £20m payout. “I have no doubt …. that the arc of history always goes in the right direction,” he said.
The Commonwealth no longer does our bidding, and why should it? After all KC3 is Head of State for a number of the countries pursuing reparations too. Sure we could have thrown our toys out of the pram and refused to sign the declaration, but that pretty much would bang in the final nail in its coffin.
We cannot praise the democratic institutions and rule of law that we bequeathed to the Commonwealth, then refuse to respond to those governments. Either we left them something valid, or we did not.
I don’t think the Commonwealth should do the UK’s bidding. That would be bizarre.
I simply note the UK’s diplomatic defeat on this issue.
The last government created a precedent, it seems:
"Mitchell also mentioned the UK government’s decision in 2013 to recognise the torture of Kenyans by British colonial forces during the Mau Mau uprising, which resulted in a £20m payout."
When you are in a minority you are not going to get your way. I guess the issue is whether you then walk out or just play along knowing you cannot be forced to do anything you do not want to do.
You don't walk out. You just say "No. You must be joking!" and sit there. You certainly don't sign a declaration that opens the door. You refuse to sign. Simple.
That's pretty much the same as walking out. Basically, you leave without a communique. I suspect that is what a lot of previous UK governments would have done. This one chose not to grandstand. Unlike others on here, I don't see that as an act of treason. We decide whether the door opens. It's all in our hands.
If you welcome turning it into a political question domestically, then you shouldn't complain if the debate goes in a direction you don't like.
I would be very surprised if it becomes a big issue domestically. All the government will say is there will be no reparations. Some on the right will accuse the government of treason and wanting to dismantle the nation state and they will look ridiculous and the world will turn.
The government has already failed to say this in an unequivocal enough fashion. It's now on the agenda, like it or not.
If the right wants to focus on the UK potentially paying reparations for the next few years I will welcome that as they will make themselves look even more cut off from reality than they do already.
What about a tariff on imports from the Caribbean to pay for reparations for the Caribbean?
You've certainly picked up the scent of curry again.
Pathetic - is that all you have left
Perhaps you should familiarise yourself with the parable of the boy who cried wolf.
Of course the punchline was that eventually there was a wolf. In this case, it won't arrive until 2029, and 2033 is more likely.
In the meantime, the government will get things right and wrong. It's the thirst for vindication by the 25%, the lack of any "maybe the public were right" that is striking.
Remember kids, Thatcher was comfortably behind in the polls this long after the '79 election, and the first turning point was when Labour elected a leader who spoke to their hearts but simply wasn't a plausible PM.
Trump says he wants to eliminate federal income tax. He should be taken seriously on this. Based on past experience, his view of how states should fund themselves could become the mainstream consensus before long.
A bit tough on the poorer states that vote Republican, and good for the wealthy States that vote Democrat.
How do you work that out? If the burden of taxation shifts from income tax to tariffs on imports, would the wealthy coastal states not pay the most?
The tariff would be paid by the importer, so distributed amongst the consumer population, but the richer states like California or New York would pay less income tax. There would be a net loss to poorer states like West Virginia or Alabama.
Do people in California and New York not consume more foreign goods than people in Alamaba?
Depends on the goods. The price of clothing would probably be a big issue in a state like Alabama.
An incentive to create jobs domestically to circumvent the tariff would benefit them. Cotton is still a big industry there.
"Way down South in the Land of Cotton, old times there are not forgotten..."
Torture in the Mau Mau Uprising was against British law and cultural norms. It was deservedly a case for compensation.
Though I note no compensation has been provided by the Mau Mau to Britain for its various atrocities.
I think we are nearly at the point in this discussion where the slaves and independence fighters of Empire should doff their caps to us in gratitude to us for enslaving them and stealing their lands.
To take the politics out of it for a moment: it's like watching Police Interceptors. "Which of several drunk idiots can be the most inarticulate? Whose syntax can be most mangled?"
Having seen - online and a couple times in person - the way people think they can behave around MPs….
One time was just outside Parliament where a protestor grabbed an MPs jacket and tried to pull them down. Prime for the “take the attackers hand in both of yours, rotate until it stops, brace, then rotate some more”.
The secret is to be a Lib Dem MP, then you live surrounded by nice well spoken people who go to Gail’s bakery. Simple.
Actually, the MP I saw being assaulted was a Lib Dem, IIRC
Was it Ed Davey? Are you sure he wasn't filming for the Fall Guy movie?
I just want to point out that when the Chagos Surrender happened and I went ape-shit on here, there was a lot of scoffing and “oh who cares it’s a tiny atoll you’ve never heard of before”
I responded that
1. I had definitely heard of it
2. The surrender was totally unnecessary and a strategic error of enormous proportions
And
3. One of the many reasons it was such a strategic error was that it would encourage all our enemies to take a run at us, perceiving us as weak and spineless with a stupid cowardly leader willing to yield to anything
Et voila
Indeed, there's no way that reparations or anything as stupid as that would be on the agenda had we not just paid billions to Mauritius to take the Chagos Islands off our hands. The Carribbean sense weakness and Starmer appointing reparations supporters like Lammy such high roles is another reason they know they can go for it and win. Starmer is a cuck.
Starmer should just have said “nah. Fuck off, I’m not signing that, it commits us to reparations”
But of course he’s incapable of showing backbone because he doesn’t have one, and deep down he agrees that Britain is evil and should pay
And that's the difference between him and Blair. Blair would have just laughed the whole discussion off and told the commonwealth nations to get back in their box because he fundamentally loved this country. Starmer very clearly doesn't, he sees us as part of the evil colonialist axis as so many lefties were indoctrinated to believe when they went to university by Marxist professors.
Could anyone imagine Margaret Thatcher, or even John Major signing it!
I don’t believe he’ll ever commit the UK to paying billions.
What he will do is offer some abject, and completely insincere, apology for slavery, before agreeing to pay symbolic reparations to governments who’ll stick the money in their offshore accounts.
That will set a precedent for anyone with a grudge against the UK to come calling.
One can imagine Cameron taking a similar line if he were PM now. Times have changed since the Thatcher era.
Its a further forty years since the colonial era.
A further forty years from when the former colonies becoming responsible for their own outcomes.
Yes but general awareness (here) of the scope and legacy of slavery was far less then than now.
Such as its clear now that the current inhabitants of the former British West Indies are among the great beneficiaries of the legacy of slavery.
Barbados and Bahamas are better places than Benin and Burkina Faso.
Hmm, so slavery was a win/win. That's not an argument one sees often, I have to say. But we're all loose as a goose on here.
I just want to point out that when the Chagos Surrender happened and I went ape-shit on here, there was a lot of scoffing and “oh who cares it’s a tiny atoll you’ve never heard of before”
I responded that
1. I had definitely heard of it
2. The surrender was totally unnecessary and a strategic error of enormous proportions
And
3. One of the many reasons it was such a strategic error was that it would encourage all our enemies to take a run at us, perceiving us as weak and spineless with a stupid cowardly leader willing to yield to anything
Et voila
Indeed, there's no way that reparations or anything as stupid as that would be on the agenda had we not just paid billions to Mauritius to take the Chagos Islands off our hands. The Carribbean sense weakness and Starmer appointing reparations supporters like Lammy such high roles is another reason they know they can go for it and win. Starmer is a cuck.
Starmer should just have said “nah. Fuck off, I’m not signing that, it commits us to reparations”
But of course he’s incapable of showing backbone because he doesn’t have one, and deep down he agrees that Britain is evil and should pay
And that's the difference between him and Blair. Blair would have just laughed the whole discussion off and told the commonwealth nations to get back in their box because he fundamentally loved this country. Starmer very clearly doesn't, he sees us as part of the evil colonialist axis as so many lefties were indoctrinated to believe when they went to university by Marxist professors.
Could anyone imagine Margaret Thatcher, or even John Major signing it!
I don’t believe he’ll ever commit the UK to paying billions.
What he will do is offer some abject, and completely insincere, apology for slavery, before agreeing to pay symbolic reparations to governments who’ll stick the money in their offshore accounts.
That will set a precedent for anyone with a grudge against the UK to come calling.
One can imagine Cameron taking a similar line if he were PM now. Times have changed since the Thatcher era.
Osborne, yes. Cameron, I think not.
Impossible to imagine a British PM now suggesting, as Cameron did, that he was proud of the Empire. But that was only 2013.
The last 10 years have really been a roller coaster.
I think it's strange that as the world moves back towards the pre-1945 view that the strong do as they will, the weak as they must, our own leaders are in complete denial about it.
That’s the point I made yesterday about our increasingly Hobbesian world.
I don’t wish for Britain to surrender its long-standing support for international institutions, but there seems to be gross lack of realpolitik and, at the end of the day, simple self-belief.
The Empire to me a key battle-line, because it is an essential part of British experience 1600-1960. It’s impossible to imagine the UK without it.
And therefore a total repudiation and condemnation of it really calls into question whether the UK itself has any legitimacy.
Exactly, which is no doubt the agenda some secretly harbour.
Destroying the sense of the nation state makes it easier to be subsumed into a United States of Europe.
Absolute lunatic comment.
The end goal of the repudiation that I talk about is the end of Western order itself, to be replaced presumably by some breed of indigenous, socialist republics.
To the extent this aids any realistic geopolitical goal, it is China’s.
I think you're right about the overall view, I'm giving the Starmer view on why this is desirable. His destruction of the UK as a nation state of which we can be proud of is to ensure when we get asked again we will definitely say yes and it paves the way for European nations to be replaced by a United States of Europe.
You've certainly picked up the scent of curry again.
Pathetic - is that all you have left
Perhaps you should familiarise yourself with the parable of the boy who cried wolf.
A confusing parable in some ways that one. One lesson being that you should always listen to known bullshitters, because the dangers of not doing so can be devastating.
It’s obvious from the reporting that the UK suffered a diplomatic defeat at the Commonwealth.
Reparations were not even on the agenda, so the UK has been “hijacked”. And despite Starmer’s pleading, it is not obvious at all the money is not to be discussed.
Starmer said none of the discussions at the summit had concerned money.
“Well, no figure,” Frederick Mitchell, the foreign minister of the Bahamas told BBC Radio’s Today programme on Saturday. “We’ll see what happens going forward.”
He said he hoped a report on the issue would follow, which nations would discuss in the future. Mitchell also mentioned the UK government’s decision in 2013 to recognise the torture of Kenyans by British colonial forces during the Mau Mau uprising, which resulted in a £20m payout. “I have no doubt …. that the arc of history always goes in the right direction,” he said.
The Commonwealth no longer does our bidding, and why should it? After all KC3 is Head of State for a number of the countries pursuing reparations too. Sure we could have thrown our toys out of the pram and refused to sign the declaration, but that pretty much would bang in the final nail in its coffin.
We cannot praise the democratic institutions and rule of law that we bequeathed to the Commonwealth, then refuse to respond to those governments. Either we left them something valid, or we did not.
I don’t think the Commonwealth should do the UK’s bidding. That would be bizarre.
I simply note the UK’s diplomatic defeat on this issue.
The last government created a precedent, it seems:
"Mitchell also mentioned the UK government’s decision in 2013 to recognise the torture of Kenyans by British colonial forces during the Mau Mau uprising, which resulted in a £20m payout."
When you are in a minority you are not going to get your way. I guess the issue is whether you then walk out or just play along knowing you cannot be forced to do anything you do not want to do.
You don't walk out. You just say "No. You must be joking!" and sit there. You certainly don't sign a declaration that opens the door. You refuse to sign. Simple.
That's pretty much the same as walking out. Basically, you leave without a communique. I suspect that is what a lot of previous UK governments would have done. This one chose not to grandstand. Unlike others on here, I don't see that as an act of treason. We decide whether the door opens. It's all in our hands.
I think it's the exact opposite: the grandstanding was signing the communique. The strange thing is, Starmer at some level probably sees this as a 'success' because he managed to water down an immediate demand for reparations into "time has come" for a conversation.
Now he's done that he has committed Britain and it sets a precedent that will be very difficult to wriggle out of in future.
Conversely, if they were told a firm and yielding no, all along, they'd go away and stop asking, and change the subject onto something else that better suited their mutual development.
I was thinking about abstaining from the Tory leadership election but after George's endorsement and I have heard a rumour from a reliable source that Jenrick was going to make Braverman either Shadow Foreign Sec or Shadow Chancellor I will be voting for Badenoch tomorrow.
You've certainly picked up the scent of curry again.
Of course, if the politician actually did do something wrong, you would immediately condemn the act, wouldn't you?
Wouldn't you?
Or do Labour politicians get a free pass?
My objection to the personal pile on from the usual suspects is that this is an actual breaking news story now featuring across the media including Sky news with the Police and Labour party releasing statements
I understand those pilling on do not agree with my politics but it is that that is the essence of this forum
I just want to point out that when the Chagos Surrender happened and I went ape-shit on here, there was a lot of scoffing and “oh who cares it’s a tiny atoll you’ve never heard of before”
I responded that
1. I had definitely heard of it
2. The surrender was totally unnecessary and a strategic error of enormous proportions
And
3. One of the many reasons it was such a strategic error was that it would encourage all our enemies to take a run at us, perceiving us as weak and spineless with a stupid cowardly leader willing to yield to anything
Et voila
Indeed, there's no way that reparations or anything as stupid as that would be on the agenda had we not just paid billions to Mauritius to take the Chagos Islands off our hands. The Carribbean sense weakness and Starmer appointing reparations supporters like Lammy such high roles is another reason they know they can go for it and win. Starmer is a cuck.
Starmer should just have said “nah. Fuck off, I’m not signing that, it commits us to reparations”
But of course he’s incapable of showing backbone because he doesn’t have one, and deep down he agrees that Britain is evil and should pay
And that's the difference between him and Blair. Blair would have just laughed the whole discussion off and told the commonwealth nations to get back in their box because he fundamentally loved this country. Starmer very clearly doesn't, he sees us as part of the evil colonialist axis as so many lefties were indoctrinated to believe when they went to university by Marxist professors.
Could anyone imagine Margaret Thatcher, or even John Major signing it!
I don’t believe he’ll ever commit the UK to paying billions.
What he will do is offer some abject, and completely insincere, apology for slavery, before agreeing to pay symbolic reparations to governments who’ll stick the money in their offshore accounts.
That will set a precedent for anyone with a grudge against the UK to come calling.
One can imagine Cameron taking a similar line if he were PM now. Times have changed since the Thatcher era.
Osborne, yes. Cameron, I think not.
Impossible to imagine a British PM now suggesting, as Cameron did, that he was proud of the Empire. But that was only 2013.
The last 10 years have really been a roller coaster.
I think it's strange that as the world moves back towards the pre-1945 view that the strong do as they will, the weak as they must, our own leaders are in complete denial about it.
That’s the point I made yesterday about our increasingly Hobbesian world.
I don’t wish for Britain to surrender its long-standing support for international institutions, but there seems to be gross lack of realpolitik and, at the end of the day, simple self-belief.
The Empire to me a key battle-line, because it is an essential part of British experience 1600-1960. It’s impossible to imagine the UK without it.
And therefore a total repudiation and condemnation of it really calls into question whether the UK itself has any legitimacy.
Exactly, which is no doubt the agenda some secretly harbour.
Destroying the sense of the nation state makes it easier to be subsumed into a United States of Europe.
Absolute lunatic comment.
The end goal of the repudiation that I talk about is the end of Western order itself, to be replaced presumably by some breed of indigenous, socialist republics.
To the extent this aids any realistic geopolitical goal, it is China’s.
I think you're right about the overall view, I'm giving the Starmer view on why this is desirable. His destruction of the UK as a nation state of which we can be proud of is to ensure when we get asked again we will definitely say yes and it paves the way for European nations to be replaced by a United States of Europe.
The EU project is ambiguous because to some, it's the first stage towards a global federation, but to others, it's a vehicle for Europe to reassert itself in the world. Of course it could also be neither of these things and instead just be part of the problem contributing to Europe's decline.
It represents an enduring vision of paradise for a certain type of UK politician and civil servant who has never really liked or felt comfortable with Britain and prefers a global form of elitism, and is also seeking a generous late-career sinecure. Taking that away from them cast them out of their promised land.
It’s obvious from the reporting that the UK suffered a diplomatic defeat at the Commonwealth.
Reparations were not even on the agenda, so the UK has been “hijacked”. And despite Starmer’s pleading, it is not obvious at all the money is not to be discussed.
Starmer said none of the discussions at the summit had concerned money.
“Well, no figure,” Frederick Mitchell, the foreign minister of the Bahamas told BBC Radio’s Today programme on Saturday. “We’ll see what happens going forward.”
He said he hoped a report on the issue would follow, which nations would discuss in the future. Mitchell also mentioned the UK government’s decision in 2013 to recognise the torture of Kenyans by British colonial forces during the Mau Mau uprising, which resulted in a £20m payout. “I have no doubt …. that the arc of history always goes in the right direction,” he said.
The Commonwealth no longer does our bidding, and why should it? After all KC3 is Head of State for a number of the countries pursuing reparations too. Sure we could have thrown our toys out of the pram and refused to sign the declaration, but that pretty much would bang in the final nail in its coffin.
We cannot praise the democratic institutions and rule of law that we bequeathed to the Commonwealth, then refuse to respond to those governments. Either we left them something valid, or we did not.
I don’t think the Commonwealth should do the UK’s bidding. That would be bizarre.
I simply note the UK’s diplomatic defeat on this issue.
The last government created a precedent, it seems:
"Mitchell also mentioned the UK government’s decision in 2013 to recognise the torture of Kenyans by British colonial forces during the Mau Mau uprising, which resulted in a £20m payout."
When you are in a minority you are not going to get your way. I guess the issue is whether you then walk out or just play along knowing you cannot be forced to do anything you do not want to do.
You don't walk out. You just say "No. You must be joking!" and sit there. You certainly don't sign a declaration that opens the door. You refuse to sign. Simple.
That's pretty much the same as walking out. Basically, you leave without a communique. I suspect that is what a lot of previous UK governments would have done. This one chose not to grandstand. Unlike others on here, I don't see that as an act of treason. We decide whether the door opens. It's all in our hands.
I think it's the exact opposite: the grandstanding was signing the communique. The strange thing is, Starmer at some level probably sees this as a 'success' because he managed to water down an immediate demand for reparations into "time has come" for a conversation.
Now he's done that he has committed Britain and it sets a precedent that will be very difficult to wriggle out of in future.
Conversely, if they were told a firm and yielding no, all along, they'd go away and stop asking, and change the subject onto something else that better suited their mutual development.
I think that is a fair view, though one I disagree with.
It’s obvious from the reporting that the UK suffered a diplomatic defeat at the Commonwealth.
Reparations were not even on the agenda, so the UK has been “hijacked”. And despite Starmer’s pleading, it is not obvious at all the money is not to be discussed.
Starmer said none of the discussions at the summit had concerned money.
“Well, no figure,” Frederick Mitchell, the foreign minister of the Bahamas told BBC Radio’s Today programme on Saturday. “We’ll see what happens going forward.”
He said he hoped a report on the issue would follow, which nations would discuss in the future. Mitchell also mentioned the UK government’s decision in 2013 to recognise the torture of Kenyans by British colonial forces during the Mau Mau uprising, which resulted in a £20m payout. “I have no doubt …. that the arc of history always goes in the right direction,” he said.
The Commonwealth no longer does our bidding, and why should it? After all KC3 is Head of State for a number of the countries pursuing reparations too. Sure we could have thrown our toys out of the pram and refused to sign the declaration, but that pretty much would bang in the final nail in its coffin.
We cannot praise the democratic institutions and rule of law that we bequeathed to the Commonwealth, then refuse to respond to those governments. Either we left them something valid, or we did not.
I don’t think the Commonwealth should do the UK’s bidding. That would be bizarre.
I simply note the UK’s diplomatic defeat on this issue.
The last government created a precedent, it seems:
"Mitchell also mentioned the UK government’s decision in 2013 to recognise the torture of Kenyans by British colonial forces during the Mau Mau uprising, which resulted in a £20m payout."
When you are in a minority you are not going to get your way. I guess the issue is whether you then walk out or just play along knowing you cannot be forced to do anything you do not want to do.
You don't walk out. You just say "No. You must be joking!" and sit there. You certainly don't sign a declaration that opens the door. You refuse to sign. Simple.
That's pretty much the same as walking out. Basically, you leave without a communique. I suspect that is what a lot of previous UK governments would have done. This one chose not to grandstand. Unlike others on here, I don't see that as an act of treason. We decide whether the door opens. It's all in our hands.
If you welcome turning it into a political question domestically, then you shouldn't complain if the debate goes in a direction you don't like.
I would be very surprised if it becomes a big issue domestically. All the government will say is there will be no reparations. Some on the right will accuse the government of treason and wanting to dismantle the nation state and they will look ridiculous and the world will turn.
The government has already failed to say this in an unequivocal enough fashion. It's now on the agenda, like it or not.
If the right wants to focus on the UK potentially paying reparations for the next few years I will welcome that as they will make themselves look even more cut off from reality than they do already.
Even more so if they want to argue that the slaves should be grateful for all the kind benefits we gave them.
I have seen such absurdity argued by Republicans in the USA, so not surprised to see the same amongst their fellow travellers here.
That would indeed be absurd, but will not affect the absurdity of the idea of paying reparations if and when the discussion ever comes up, since one absurdity does not counter another.
Will the Right push it as a potential prospect too much? Quite possibly, parties do that sometimes when they think they are onto a winner, they overplay their hand, but it is a ridiculous idea and impractical to boot, so if it comes up organically I see no issue with ripping the idea to shreds.
You've certainly picked up the scent of curry again.
Pathetic - is that all you have left
Perhaps you should familiarise yourself with the parable of the boy who cried wolf.
Of course the punchline was that eventually there was a wolf. In this case, it won't arrive until 2029, and 2033 is more likely.
In the meantime, the government will get things right and wrong. It's the thirst for vindication by the 25%, the lack of any "maybe the public were right" that is striking.
Remember kids, Thatcher was comfortably behind in the polls this long after the '79 election, and the first turning point was when Labour elected a leader who spoke to their hearts but simply wasn't a plausible PM.
Thatcher ended up third in the polls at one point.
I was eight months old when Thatcher became PM but people who lived through that era told me that Thatcher would be replaced PDQ after
i) putting up VAT from 8% to 15%
ii) the race riots
iii) the recession
iv) spending cuts
I mean she even capitulated to Arthur Scargill/the NUM.
You've certainly picked up the scent of curry again.
Pathetic - is that all you have left
Perhaps you should familiarise yourself with the parable of the boy who cried wolf.
A confusing parable in some ways that one. One lesson being that you should always listen to known bullshitters, because the dangers of not doing so can be devastating.
I prefer Garak's take, that you should never tell the same lie twice.
You've certainly picked up the scent of curry again.
Of course, if the politician actually did do something wrong, you would immediately condemn the act, wouldn't you?
Wouldn't you?
Or do Labour politicians get a free pass?
Of course if the guy has initiated an unprovoked and drunken attack on an innocent bystander he deserves a moment in the magistrates court and whatever follows.
I really have no particular enthusiasm for the Labour Party. Many of us on here today have been accused of being Labour shills by partisan Conservatives. Since the days of Corbyn I am no lover of Labour and I am content to call them out for genuine missteps, although not innuendo or fake news until it had been proven to be true.
I do have to confess that I absolutely despise Johnsonian Conservatives. Not one nation feudal Tories, they are fine- if there are any left, just miserable lying, corrupt Charlatans.
It’s obvious from the reporting that the UK suffered a diplomatic defeat at the Commonwealth.
Reparations were not even on the agenda, so the UK has been “hijacked”. And despite Starmer’s pleading, it is not obvious at all the money is not to be discussed.
Starmer said none of the discussions at the summit had concerned money.
“Well, no figure,” Frederick Mitchell, the foreign minister of the Bahamas told BBC Radio’s Today programme on Saturday. “We’ll see what happens going forward.”
He said he hoped a report on the issue would follow, which nations would discuss in the future. Mitchell also mentioned the UK government’s decision in 2013 to recognise the torture of Kenyans by British colonial forces during the Mau Mau uprising, which resulted in a £20m payout. “I have no doubt …. that the arc of history always goes in the right direction,” he said.
The Commonwealth no longer does our bidding, and why should it? After all KC3 is Head of State for a number of the countries pursuing reparations too. Sure we could have thrown our toys out of the pram and refused to sign the declaration, but that pretty much would bang in the final nail in its coffin.
We cannot praise the democratic institutions and rule of law that we bequeathed to the Commonwealth, then refuse to respond to those governments. Either we left them something valid, or we did not.
I don’t think the Commonwealth should do the UK’s bidding. That would be bizarre.
I simply note the UK’s diplomatic defeat on this issue.
The last government created a precedent, it seems:
"Mitchell also mentioned the UK government’s decision in 2013 to recognise the torture of Kenyans by British colonial forces during the Mau Mau uprising, which resulted in a £20m payout."
When you are in a minority you are not going to get your way. I guess the issue is whether you then walk out or just play along knowing you cannot be forced to do anything you do not want to do.
You don't walk out. You just say "No. You must be joking!" and sit there. You certainly don't sign a declaration that opens the door. You refuse to sign. Simple.
That's pretty much the same as walking out. Basically, you leave without a communique. I suspect that is what a lot of previous UK governments would have done. This one chose not to grandstand. Unlike others on here, I don't see that as an act of treason. We decide whether the door opens. It's all in our hands.
I think it's the exact opposite: the grandstanding was signing the communique. The strange thing is, Starmer at some level probably sees this as a 'success' because he managed to water down an immediate demand for reparations into "time has come" for a conversation.
Now he's done that he has committed Britain and it sets a precedent that will be very difficult to wriggle out of in future.
Conversely, if they were told a firm and yielding no, all along, they'd go away and stop asking, and change the subject onto something else that better suited their mutual development.
Giving in a little to get an agreed message out was an easy choice for a PM in these circumstances, trading an immediate potential embarrassment into a potential problem for another day, one he may even get lucky and not really flare up for quite some time, if ever. But people do seize on these fluffy declarations to put pressure on later, so it's not meaningless.
It’s obvious from the reporting that the UK suffered a diplomatic defeat at the Commonwealth.
Reparations were not even on the agenda, so the UK has been “hijacked”. And despite Starmer’s pleading, it is not obvious at all the money is not to be discussed.
Starmer said none of the discussions at the summit had concerned money.
“Well, no figure,” Frederick Mitchell, the foreign minister of the Bahamas told BBC Radio’s Today programme on Saturday. “We’ll see what happens going forward.”
He said he hoped a report on the issue would follow, which nations would discuss in the future. Mitchell also mentioned the UK government’s decision in 2013 to recognise the torture of Kenyans by British colonial forces during the Mau Mau uprising, which resulted in a £20m payout. “I have no doubt …. that the arc of history always goes in the right direction,” he said.
The Commonwealth no longer does our bidding, and why should it? After all KC3 is Head of State for a number of the countries pursuing reparations too. Sure we could have thrown our toys out of the pram and refused to sign the declaration, but that pretty much would bang in the final nail in its coffin.
We cannot praise the democratic institutions and rule of law that we bequeathed to the Commonwealth, then refuse to respond to those governments. Either we left them something valid, or we did not.
I don’t think the Commonwealth should do the UK’s bidding. That would be bizarre.
I simply note the UK’s diplomatic defeat on this issue.
The last government created a precedent, it seems:
"Mitchell also mentioned the UK government’s decision in 2013 to recognise the torture of Kenyans by British colonial forces during the Mau Mau uprising, which resulted in a £20m payout."
When you are in a minority you are not going to get your way. I guess the issue is whether you then walk out or just play along knowing you cannot be forced to do anything you do not want to do.
You don't walk out. You just say "No. You must be joking!" and sit there. You certainly don't sign a declaration that opens the door. You refuse to sign. Simple.
That's pretty much the same as walking out. Basically, you leave without a communique. I suspect that is what a lot of previous UK governments would have done. This one chose not to grandstand. Unlike others on here, I don't see that as an act of treason. We decide whether the door opens. It's all in our hands.
I think it's the exact opposite: the grandstanding was signing the communique. The strange thing is, Starmer at some level probably sees this as a 'success' because he managed to water down an immediate demand for reparations into "time has come" for a conversation.
Now he's done that he has committed Britain and it sets a precedent that will be very difficult to wriggle out of in future.
Conversely, if they were told a firm and yielding no, all along, they'd go away and stop asking, and change the subject onto something else that better suited their mutual development.
I think that is a fair view, though one I disagree with.
You disagree with it because it's me and saying it and a "Tory".
It's unarguable and you're only defending it because it's a Labour PM who's done it; deep-down you know it to be the true disaster it really is.
I just want to point out that when the Chagos Surrender happened and I went ape-shit on here, there was a lot of scoffing and “oh who cares it’s a tiny atoll you’ve never heard of before”
I responded that
1. I had definitely heard of it
2. The surrender was totally unnecessary and a strategic error of enormous proportions
And
3. One of the many reasons it was such a strategic error was that it would encourage all our enemies to take a run at us, perceiving us as weak and spineless with a stupid cowardly leader willing to yield to anything
Et voila
Indeed, there's no way that reparations or anything as stupid as that would be on the agenda had we not just paid billions to Mauritius to take the Chagos Islands off our hands. The Carribbean sense weakness and Starmer appointing reparations supporters like Lammy such high roles is another reason they know they can go for it and win. Starmer is a cuck.
Starmer should just have said “nah. Fuck off, I’m not signing that, it commits us to reparations”
But of course he’s incapable of showing backbone because he doesn’t have one, and deep down he agrees that Britain is evil and should pay
And that's the difference between him and Blair. Blair would have just laughed the whole discussion off and told the commonwealth nations to get back in their box because he fundamentally loved this country. Starmer very clearly doesn't, he sees us as part of the evil colonialist axis as so many lefties were indoctrinated to believe when they went to university by Marxist professors.
Could anyone imagine Margaret Thatcher, or even John Major signing it!
I don’t believe he’ll ever commit the UK to paying billions.
What he will do is offer some abject, and completely insincere, apology for slavery, before agreeing to pay symbolic reparations to governments who’ll stick the money in their offshore accounts.
That will set a precedent for anyone with a grudge against the UK to come calling.
One can imagine Cameron taking a similar line if he were PM now. Times have changed since the Thatcher era.
Osborne, yes. Cameron, I think not.
Impossible to imagine a British PM now suggesting, as Cameron did, that he was proud of the Empire. But that was only 2013.
The last 10 years have really been a roller coaster.
I think it's strange that as the world moves back towards the pre-1945 view that the strong do as they will, the weak as they must, our own leaders are in complete denial about it.
That’s the point I made yesterday about our increasingly Hobbesian world.
I don’t wish for Britain to surrender its long-standing support for international institutions, but there seems to be gross lack of realpolitik and, at the end of the day, simple self-belief.
The Empire to me a key battle-line, because it is an essential part of British experience 1600-1960. It’s impossible to imagine the UK without it.
And therefore a total repudiation and condemnation of it really calls into question whether the UK itself has any legitimacy.
Exactly, which is no doubt the agenda some secretly harbour.
Destroying the sense of the nation state makes it easier to be subsumed into a United States of Europe.
Absolute lunatic comment.
The end goal of the repudiation that I talk about is the end of Western order itself, to be replaced presumably by some breed of indigenous, socialist republics.
To the extent this aids any realistic geopolitical goal, it is China’s.
I think you're right about the overall view, I'm giving the Starmer view on why this is desirable. His destruction of the UK as a nation state of which we can be proud of is to ensure when we get asked again we will definitely say yes and it paves the way for European nations to be replaced by a United States of Europe.
The best way to look at all this, depressing as it is; is that it will hasten the birth of something new - IE something that completely destroys the labour party. The memes will be brewing already: pensioners dying to fund reparations at the insistence of its left wing MP's, etc.
Labour in power will be depicted as all the bad parts of Corbynism plus punitive austerity plus a bit of pointless authoritarianism thrown in. The labour party will just collapse.
You've certainly picked up the scent of curry again.
Pathetic - is that all you have left
Perhaps you should familiarise yourself with the parable of the boy who cried wolf.
A confusing parable in some ways that one. One lesson being that you should always listen to known bullshitters, because the dangers of not doing so can be devastating.
I prefer Garak's take, that you should never tell the same lie twice.
Still needs a bit of work. Repeated lies often work well, prevent you from tying yourself in knots with new details.
The boy's problem was the pointlessness of the lie, you need to save them for important moments, like election campaigns.
It’s obvious from the reporting that the UK suffered a diplomatic defeat at the Commonwealth.
Reparations were not even on the agenda, so the UK has been “hijacked”. And despite Starmer’s pleading, it is not obvious at all the money is not to be discussed.
Starmer said none of the discussions at the summit had concerned money.
“Well, no figure,” Frederick Mitchell, the foreign minister of the Bahamas told BBC Radio’s Today programme on Saturday. “We’ll see what happens going forward.”
He said he hoped a report on the issue would follow, which nations would discuss in the future. Mitchell also mentioned the UK government’s decision in 2013 to recognise the torture of Kenyans by British colonial forces during the Mau Mau uprising, which resulted in a £20m payout. “I have no doubt …. that the arc of history always goes in the right direction,” he said.
The Commonwealth no longer does our bidding, and why should it? After all KC3 is Head of State for a number of the countries pursuing reparations too. Sure we could have thrown our toys out of the pram and refused to sign the declaration, but that pretty much would bang in the final nail in its coffin.
We cannot praise the democratic institutions and rule of law that we bequeathed to the Commonwealth, then refuse to respond to those governments. Either we left them something valid, or we did not.
I don’t think the Commonwealth should do the UK’s bidding. That would be bizarre.
I simply note the UK’s diplomatic defeat on this issue.
The last government created a precedent, it seems:
"Mitchell also mentioned the UK government’s decision in 2013 to recognise the torture of Kenyans by British colonial forces during the Mau Mau uprising, which resulted in a £20m payout."
When you are in a minority you are not going to get your way. I guess the issue is whether you then walk out or just play along knowing you cannot be forced to do anything you do not want to do.
You don't walk out. You just say "No. You must be joking!" and sit there. You certainly don't sign a declaration that opens the door. You refuse to sign. Simple.
That's pretty much the same as walking out. Basically, you leave without a communique. I suspect that is what a lot of previous UK governments would have done. This one chose not to grandstand. Unlike others on here, I don't see that as an act of treason. We decide whether the door opens. It's all in our hands.
If you welcome turning it into a political question domestically, then you shouldn't complain if the debate goes in a direction you don't like.
I would be very surprised if it becomes a big issue domestically. All the government will say is there will be no reparations. Some on the right will accuse the government of treason and wanting to dismantle the nation state and they will look ridiculous and the world will turn.
The government has already failed to say this in an unequivocal enough fashion. It's now on the agenda, like it or not.
If the right wants to focus on the UK potentially paying reparations for the next few years I will welcome that as they will make themselves look even more cut off from reality than they do already.
What about a tariff on imports from the Caribbean to pay for reparations for the Caribbean?
There’s something in that to upset *everyone*
I like your thinking!
When I become Absolute UnDictator of the U.K. we will have universal peace. But first, a wild 5 minutes…
My other idea is that we impose a tax on the Libyan Coastguard to pay reparations. After we have done paying off slavery, they pay off the reparations for the activities of… the Libyan Coastguard.
It’s obvious from the reporting that the UK suffered a diplomatic defeat at the Commonwealth.
Reparations were not even on the agenda, so the UK has been “hijacked”. And despite Starmer’s pleading, it is not obvious at all the money is not to be discussed.
Starmer said none of the discussions at the summit had concerned money.
“Well, no figure,” Frederick Mitchell, the foreign minister of the Bahamas told BBC Radio’s Today programme on Saturday. “We’ll see what happens going forward.”
He said he hoped a report on the issue would follow, which nations would discuss in the future. Mitchell also mentioned the UK government’s decision in 2013 to recognise the torture of Kenyans by British colonial forces during the Mau Mau uprising, which resulted in a £20m payout. “I have no doubt …. that the arc of history always goes in the right direction,” he said.
The Commonwealth no longer does our bidding, and why should it? After all KC3 is Head of State for a number of the countries pursuing reparations too. Sure we could have thrown our toys out of the pram and refused to sign the declaration, but that pretty much would bang in the final nail in its coffin.
We cannot praise the democratic institutions and rule of law that we bequeathed to the Commonwealth, then refuse to respond to those governments. Either we left them something valid, or we did not.
I don’t think the Commonwealth should do the UK’s bidding. That would be bizarre.
I simply note the UK’s diplomatic defeat on this issue.
The last government created a precedent, it seems:
"Mitchell also mentioned the UK government’s decision in 2013 to recognise the torture of Kenyans by British colonial forces during the Mau Mau uprising, which resulted in a £20m payout."
When you are in a minority you are not going to get your way. I guess the issue is whether you then walk out or just play along knowing you cannot be forced to do anything you do not want to do.
You don't walk out. You just say "No. You must be joking!" and sit there. You certainly don't sign a declaration that opens the door. You refuse to sign. Simple.
That's pretty much the same as walking out. Basically, you leave without a communique. I suspect that is what a lot of previous UK governments would have done. This one chose not to grandstand. Unlike others on here, I don't see that as an act of treason. We decide whether the door opens. It's all in our hands.
If you welcome turning it into a political question domestically, then you shouldn't complain if the debate goes in a direction you don't like.
I would be very surprised if it becomes a big issue domestically. All the government will say is there will be no reparations. Some on the right will accuse the government of treason and wanting to dismantle the nation state and they will look ridiculous and the world will turn.
The government has already failed to say this in an unequivocal enough fashion. It's now on the agenda, like it or not.
If the right wants to focus on the UK potentially paying reparations for the next few years I will welcome that as they will make themselves look even more cut off from reality than they do already.
Presumably they could just alternatively demand all the aid money (60 years worth?) back and tell them they are not having any reparations.
I just want to point out that when the Chagos Surrender happened and I went ape-shit on here, there was a lot of scoffing and “oh who cares it’s a tiny atoll you’ve never heard of before”
I responded that
1. I had definitely heard of it
2. The surrender was totally unnecessary and a strategic error of enormous proportions
And
3. One of the many reasons it was such a strategic error was that it would encourage all our enemies to take a run at us, perceiving us as weak and spineless with a stupid cowardly leader willing to yield to anything
Et voila
Indeed, there's no way that reparations or anything as stupid as that would be on the agenda had we not just paid billions to Mauritius to take the Chagos Islands off our hands. The Carribbean sense weakness and Starmer appointing reparations supporters like Lammy such high roles is another reason they know they can go for it and win. Starmer is a cuck.
Starmer should just have said “nah. Fuck off, I’m not signing that, it commits us to reparations”
But of course he’s incapable of showing backbone because he doesn’t have one, and deep down he agrees that Britain is evil and should pay
And that's the difference between him and Blair. Blair would have just laughed the whole discussion off and told the commonwealth nations to get back in their box because he fundamentally loved this country. Starmer very clearly doesn't, he sees us as part of the evil colonialist axis as so many lefties were indoctrinated to believe when they went to university by Marxist professors.
Could anyone imagine Margaret Thatcher, or even John Major signing it!
I don’t believe he’ll ever commit the UK to paying billions.
What he will do is offer some abject, and completely insincere, apology for slavery, before agreeing to pay symbolic reparations to governments who’ll stick the money in their offshore accounts.
That will set a precedent for anyone with a grudge against the UK to come calling.
One can imagine Cameron taking a similar line if he were PM now. Times have changed since the Thatcher era.
Osborne, yes. Cameron, I think not.
Impossible to imagine a British PM now suggesting, as Cameron did, that he was proud of the Empire. But that was only 2013.
The last 10 years have really been a roller coaster.
I think it's strange that as the world moves back towards the pre-1945 view that the strong do as they will, the weak as they must, our own leaders are in complete denial about it.
That’s the point I made yesterday about our increasingly Hobbesian world.
I don’t wish for Britain to surrender its long-standing support for international institutions, but there seems to be gross lack of realpolitik and, at the end of the day, simple self-belief.
The Empire to me a key battle-line, because it is an essential part of British experience 1600-1960. It’s impossible to imagine the UK without it.
And therefore a total repudiation and condemnation of it really calls into question whether the UK itself has any legitimacy.
Exactly, which is no doubt the agenda some secretly harbour.
Destroying the sense of the nation state makes it easier to be subsumed into a United States of Europe.
Absolute lunatic comment.
The end goal of the repudiation that I talk about is the end of Western order itself, to be replaced presumably by some breed of indigenous, socialist republics.
To the extent this aids any realistic geopolitical goal, it is China’s.
I think you're right about the overall view, I'm giving the Starmer view on why this is desirable. His destruction of the UK as a nation state of which we can be proud of is to ensure when we get asked again we will definitely say yes and it paves the way for European nations to be replaced by a United States of Europe.
The EU project is ambiguous because to some, it's the first stage towards a global federation, but to others, it's a vehicle for Europe to reassert itself in the world. Of course it could also be neither of these things and instead just be part of the problem contributing to Europe's decline.
I regret my Leave vote because of how poor a job was done afterwards, which I doubt will now be improved, but part of the reason I voted Leave in the first place was because whilst the dream of the EU sounds great, the reality of it does not and will never live up to that by the very nature of the organisation.
Trump says he wants to eliminate federal income tax. He should be taken seriously on this. Based on past experience, his view of how states should fund themselves could become the mainstream consensus before long.
A bit tough on the poorer states that vote Republican, and good for the wealthy States that vote Democrat.
How do you work that out? If the burden of taxation shifts from income tax to tariffs on imports, would the wealthy coastal states not pay the most?
The tariff would be paid by the importer, so distributed amongst the consumer population, but the richer states like California or New York would pay less income tax. There would be a net loss to poorer states like West Virginia or Alabama.
Do people in California and New York not consume more foreign goods than people in Alamaba?
Depends on the goods. The price of clothing would probably be a big issue in a state like Alabama.
An incentive to create jobs domestically to circumvent the tariff would benefit them. Cotton is still a big industry there.
"Way down South in the Land of Cotton, old times there are not forgotten..."
It’s obvious from the reporting that the UK suffered a diplomatic defeat at the Commonwealth.
Reparations were not even on the agenda, so the UK has been “hijacked”. And despite Starmer’s pleading, it is not obvious at all the money is not to be discussed.
Starmer said none of the discussions at the summit had concerned money.
“Well, no figure,” Frederick Mitchell, the foreign minister of the Bahamas told BBC Radio’s Today programme on Saturday. “We’ll see what happens going forward.”
He said he hoped a report on the issue would follow, which nations would discuss in the future. Mitchell also mentioned the UK government’s decision in 2013 to recognise the torture of Kenyans by British colonial forces during the Mau Mau uprising, which resulted in a £20m payout. “I have no doubt …. that the arc of history always goes in the right direction,” he said.
The Commonwealth no longer does our bidding, and why should it? After all KC3 is Head of State for a number of the countries pursuing reparations too. Sure we could have thrown our toys out of the pram and refused to sign the declaration, but that pretty much would bang in the final nail in its coffin.
We cannot praise the democratic institutions and rule of law that we bequeathed to the Commonwealth, then refuse to respond to those governments. Either we left them something valid, or we did not.
I don’t think the Commonwealth should do the UK’s bidding. That would be bizarre.
I simply note the UK’s diplomatic defeat on this issue.
The last government created a precedent, it seems:
"Mitchell also mentioned the UK government’s decision in 2013 to recognise the torture of Kenyans by British colonial forces during the Mau Mau uprising, which resulted in a £20m payout."
When you are in a minority you are not going to get your way. I guess the issue is whether you then walk out or just play along knowing you cannot be forced to do anything you do not want to do.
You don't walk out. You just say "No. You must be joking!" and sit there. You certainly don't sign a declaration that opens the door. You refuse to sign. Simple.
That's pretty much the same as walking out. Basically, you leave without a communique. I suspect that is what a lot of previous UK governments would have done. This one chose not to grandstand. Unlike others on here, I don't see that as an act of treason. We decide whether the door opens. It's all in our hands.
I think it's the exact opposite: the grandstanding was signing the communique. The strange thing is, Starmer at some level probably sees this as a 'success' because he managed to water down an immediate demand for reparations into "time has come" for a conversation.
Now he's done that he has committed Britain and it sets a precedent that will be very difficult to wriggle out of in future.
Conversely, if they were told a firm and yielding no, all along, they'd go away and stop asking, and change the subject onto something else that better suited their mutual development.
I think that is a fair view, though one I disagree with.
You disagree with it because it's me and saying it and a "Tory".
It's unarguable and you're only defending it because it's a Labour PM who's done it; deep-down you know it to be the true disaster it really is.
Ah, I thought for the moment we were on the verge of a sensible conversation. My mistake.
It’s obvious from the reporting that the UK suffered a diplomatic defeat at the Commonwealth.
Reparations were not even on the agenda, so the UK has been “hijacked”. And despite Starmer’s pleading, it is not obvious at all the money is not to be discussed.
Starmer said none of the discussions at the summit had concerned money.
“Well, no figure,” Frederick Mitchell, the foreign minister of the Bahamas told BBC Radio’s Today programme on Saturday. “We’ll see what happens going forward.”
He said he hoped a report on the issue would follow, which nations would discuss in the future. Mitchell also mentioned the UK government’s decision in 2013 to recognise the torture of Kenyans by British colonial forces during the Mau Mau uprising, which resulted in a £20m payout. “I have no doubt …. that the arc of history always goes in the right direction,” he said.
The Commonwealth no longer does our bidding, and why should it? After all KC3 is Head of State for a number of the countries pursuing reparations too. Sure we could have thrown our toys out of the pram and refused to sign the declaration, but that pretty much would bang in the final nail in its coffin.
We cannot praise the democratic institutions and rule of law that we bequeathed to the Commonwealth, then refuse to respond to those governments. Either we left them something valid, or we did not.
I don’t think the Commonwealth should do the UK’s bidding. That would be bizarre.
I simply note the UK’s diplomatic defeat on this issue.
The last government created a precedent, it seems:
"Mitchell also mentioned the UK government’s decision in 2013 to recognise the torture of Kenyans by British colonial forces during the Mau Mau uprising, which resulted in a £20m payout."
When you are in a minority you are not going to get your way. I guess the issue is whether you then walk out or just play along knowing you cannot be forced to do anything you do not want to do.
You don't walk out. You just say "No. You must be joking!" and sit there. You certainly don't sign a declaration that opens the door. You refuse to sign. Simple.
That's pretty much the same as walking out. Basically, you leave without a communique. I suspect that is what a lot of previous UK governments would have done. This one chose not to grandstand. Unlike others on here, I don't see that as an act of treason. We decide whether the door opens. It's all in our hands.
They all leave without a communique. It's not us walking out. They all walk out. Not agreeing to reparations is not grandstanding. It's resisting blackmail and I'm sure would have the support of the vast majority in the UK. No doubt there will be a poll soon.
As much as you may wish it otherwise, the UK government has not agreed to reparations.
It has agreed the following:
"Heads, noting calls for discussions on reparatory justice with regard to the trans-Atlantic trade in enslaved Africans and chattel enslavement and recognising the importance of this matter to member states of the Commonwealth, the majority of which share common historical experiences in relation to this abhorrent trade, agreed that the time has come for a meaningful, truthful and respectful conversation towards forging a common future based on equity. Heads further agreed to continue playing an active role in bringing about such inclusive conversations addressing these harms."
So Starmer has agreed to a meaningful conversation on reparations, because that's what it's about. What else?
Perhaps it's Starmer kicking the discussion into the long grass out of politeness.
I would simply say No. People alive now had nothing to do with slavery on either side. It's a scam. I wouldn't raise expectations. I'd shut them down.
It’s obvious from the reporting that the UK suffered a diplomatic defeat at the Commonwealth.
Reparations were not even on the agenda, so the UK has been “hijacked”. And despite Starmer’s pleading, it is not obvious at all the money is not to be discussed.
Starmer said none of the discussions at the summit had concerned money.
“Well, no figure,” Frederick Mitchell, the foreign minister of the Bahamas told BBC Radio’s Today programme on Saturday. “We’ll see what happens going forward.”
He said he hoped a report on the issue would follow, which nations would discuss in the future. Mitchell also mentioned the UK government’s decision in 2013 to recognise the torture of Kenyans by British colonial forces during the Mau Mau uprising, which resulted in a £20m payout. “I have no doubt …. that the arc of history always goes in the right direction,” he said.
The Commonwealth no longer does our bidding, and why should it? After all KC3 is Head of State for a number of the countries pursuing reparations too. Sure we could have thrown our toys out of the pram and refused to sign the declaration, but that pretty much would bang in the final nail in its coffin.
We cannot praise the democratic institutions and rule of law that we bequeathed to the Commonwealth, then refuse to respond to those governments. Either we left them something valid, or we did not.
I don’t think the Commonwealth should do the UK’s bidding. That would be bizarre.
I simply note the UK’s diplomatic defeat on this issue.
The last government created a precedent, it seems:
"Mitchell also mentioned the UK government’s decision in 2013 to recognise the torture of Kenyans by British colonial forces during the Mau Mau uprising, which resulted in a £20m payout."
When you are in a minority you are not going to get your way. I guess the issue is whether you then walk out or just play along knowing you cannot be forced to do anything you do not want to do.
You don't walk out. You just say "No. You must be joking!" and sit there. You certainly don't sign a declaration that opens the door. You refuse to sign. Simple.
That's pretty much the same as walking out. Basically, you leave without a communique. I suspect that is what a lot of previous UK governments would have done. This one chose not to grandstand. Unlike others on here, I don't see that as an act of treason. We decide whether the door opens. It's all in our hands.
If you welcome turning it into a political question domestically, then you shouldn't complain if the debate goes in a direction you don't like.
I would be very surprised if it becomes a big issue domestically. All the government will say is there will be no reparations. Some on the right will accuse the government of treason and wanting to dismantle the nation state and they will look ridiculous and the world will turn.
The government has already failed to say this in an unequivocal enough fashion. It's now on the agenda, like it or not.
If the right wants to focus on the UK potentially paying reparations for the next few years I will welcome that as they will make themselves look even more cut off from reality than they do already.
Presumably they could just alternatively demand all the aid money (60 years worth?) back and tell them they are not having any reparations.
The Commonwealth never had much actual point to it, that looseness has been part of its relative strength, but I confess I really don't see what it's purpose is supposed to be with the issue of reparations in the mix. Attempts are being made to frame as a dialogue but its an inherently confrontational and adversarial process, it feels like more formal processes or organisations would be better suited.
It’s obvious from the reporting that the UK suffered a diplomatic defeat at the Commonwealth.
Reparations were not even on the agenda, so the UK has been “hijacked”. And despite Starmer’s pleading, it is not obvious at all the money is not to be discussed.
Starmer said none of the discussions at the summit had concerned money.
“Well, no figure,” Frederick Mitchell, the foreign minister of the Bahamas told BBC Radio’s Today programme on Saturday. “We’ll see what happens going forward.”
He said he hoped a report on the issue would follow, which nations would discuss in the future. Mitchell also mentioned the UK government’s decision in 2013 to recognise the torture of Kenyans by British colonial forces during the Mau Mau uprising, which resulted in a £20m payout. “I have no doubt …. that the arc of history always goes in the right direction,” he said.
The Commonwealth no longer does our bidding, and why should it? After all KC3 is Head of State for a number of the countries pursuing reparations too. Sure we could have thrown our toys out of the pram and refused to sign the declaration, but that pretty much would bang in the final nail in its coffin.
We cannot praise the democratic institutions and rule of law that we bequeathed to the Commonwealth, then refuse to respond to those governments. Either we left them something valid, or we did not.
I don’t think the Commonwealth should do the UK’s bidding. That would be bizarre.
I simply note the UK’s diplomatic defeat on this issue.
The last government created a precedent, it seems:
"Mitchell also mentioned the UK government’s decision in 2013 to recognise the torture of Kenyans by British colonial forces during the Mau Mau uprising, which resulted in a £20m payout."
When you are in a minority you are not going to get your way. I guess the issue is whether you then walk out or just play along knowing you cannot be forced to do anything you do not want to do.
You don't walk out. You just say "No. You must be joking!" and sit there. You certainly don't sign a declaration that opens the door. You refuse to sign. Simple.
That's pretty much the same as walking out. Basically, you leave without a communique. I suspect that is what a lot of previous UK governments would have done. This one chose not to grandstand. Unlike others on here, I don't see that as an act of treason. We decide whether the door opens. It's all in our hands.
If you welcome turning it into a political question domestically, then you shouldn't complain if the debate goes in a direction you don't like.
I would be very surprised if it becomes a big issue domestically. All the government will say is there will be no reparations. Some on the right will accuse the government of treason and wanting to dismantle the nation state and they will look ridiculous and the world will turn.
The government has already failed to say this in an unequivocal enough fashion. It's now on the agenda, like it or not.
If the right wants to focus on the UK potentially paying reparations for the next few years I will welcome that as they will make themselves look even more cut off from reality than they do already.
Presumably they could just alternatively demand all the aid money (60 years worth?) back and tell them they are not having any reparations.
It’s obvious from the reporting that the UK suffered a diplomatic defeat at the Commonwealth.
Reparations were not even on the agenda, so the UK has been “hijacked”. And despite Starmer’s pleading, it is not obvious at all the money is not to be discussed.
Starmer said none of the discussions at the summit had concerned money.
“Well, no figure,” Frederick Mitchell, the foreign minister of the Bahamas told BBC Radio’s Today programme on Saturday. “We’ll see what happens going forward.”
He said he hoped a report on the issue would follow, which nations would discuss in the future. Mitchell also mentioned the UK government’s decision in 2013 to recognise the torture of Kenyans by British colonial forces during the Mau Mau uprising, which resulted in a £20m payout. “I have no doubt …. that the arc of history always goes in the right direction,” he said.
The Commonwealth no longer does our bidding, and why should it? After all KC3 is Head of State for a number of the countries pursuing reparations too. Sure we could have thrown our toys out of the pram and refused to sign the declaration, but that pretty much would bang in the final nail in its coffin.
We cannot praise the democratic institutions and rule of law that we bequeathed to the Commonwealth, then refuse to respond to those governments. Either we left them something valid, or we did not.
I don’t think the Commonwealth should do the UK’s bidding. That would be bizarre.
I simply note the UK’s diplomatic defeat on this issue.
The last government created a precedent, it seems:
"Mitchell also mentioned the UK government’s decision in 2013 to recognise the torture of Kenyans by British colonial forces during the Mau Mau uprising, which resulted in a £20m payout."
When you are in a minority you are not going to get your way. I guess the issue is whether you then walk out or just play along knowing you cannot be forced to do anything you do not want to do.
You don't walk out. You just say "No. You must be joking!" and sit there. You certainly don't sign a declaration that opens the door. You refuse to sign. Simple.
That's pretty much the same as walking out. Basically, you leave without a communique. I suspect that is what a lot of previous UK governments would have done. This one chose not to grandstand. Unlike others on here, I don't see that as an act of treason. We decide whether the door opens. It's all in our hands.
They all leave without a communique. It's not us walking out. They all walk out. Not agreeing to reparations is not grandstanding. It's resisting blackmail and I'm sure would have the support of the vast majority in the UK. No doubt there will be a poll soon.
As much as you may wish it otherwise, the UK government has not agreed to reparations.
It has agreed the following:
"Heads, noting calls for discussions on reparatory justice with regard to the trans-Atlantic trade in enslaved Africans and chattel enslavement and recognising the importance of this matter to member states of the Commonwealth, the majority of which share common historical experiences in relation to this abhorrent trade, agreed that the time has come for a meaningful, truthful and respectful conversation towards forging a common future based on equity. Heads further agreed to continue playing an active role in bringing about such inclusive conversations addressing these harms."
So Starmer has agreed to a meaningful conversation on reparations, because that's what it's about. What else?
Perhaps it is a cynical kicking of the discussion into the long grass out of politeness.
I would simply say No. People alive now had nothing to do with slavery on either side. It's a scam.
Yep, to me that looks like a kick into the very long grass. It's very clearly not the UK agreeing to pay reparations.
I just want to point out that when the Chagos Surrender happened and I went ape-shit on here, there was a lot of scoffing and “oh who cares it’s a tiny atoll you’ve never heard of before”
I responded that
1. I had definitely heard of it
2. The surrender was totally unnecessary and a strategic error of enormous proportions
And
3. One of the many reasons it was such a strategic error was that it would encourage all our enemies to take a run at us, perceiving us as weak and spineless with a stupid cowardly leader willing to yield to anything
Et voila
Indeed, there's no way that reparations or anything as stupid as that would be on the agenda had we not just paid billions to Mauritius to take the Chagos Islands off our hands. The Carribbean sense weakness and Starmer appointing reparations supporters like Lammy such high roles is another reason they know they can go for it and win. Starmer is a cuck.
Starmer should just have said “nah. Fuck off, I’m not signing that, it commits us to reparations”
But of course he’s incapable of showing backbone because he doesn’t have one, and deep down he agrees that Britain is evil and should pay
And that's the difference between him and Blair. Blair would have just laughed the whole discussion off and told the commonwealth nations to get back in their box because he fundamentally loved this country. Starmer very clearly doesn't, he sees us as part of the evil colonialist axis as so many lefties were indoctrinated to believe when they went to university by Marxist professors.
Could anyone imagine Margaret Thatcher, or even John Major signing it!
I don’t believe he’ll ever commit the UK to paying billions.
What he will do is offer some abject, and completely insincere, apology for slavery, before agreeing to pay symbolic reparations to governments who’ll stick the money in their offshore accounts.
That will set a precedent for anyone with a grudge against the UK to come calling.
One can imagine Cameron taking a similar line if he were PM now. Times have changed since the Thatcher era.
Osborne, yes. Cameron, I think not.
Impossible to imagine a British PM now suggesting, as Cameron did, that he was proud of the Empire. But that was only 2013.
The last 10 years have really been a roller coaster.
I think it's strange that as the world moves back towards the pre-1945 view that the strong do as they will, the weak as they must, our own leaders are in complete denial about it.
That’s the point I made yesterday about our increasingly Hobbesian world.
I don’t wish for Britain to surrender its long-standing support for international institutions, but there seems to be gross lack of realpolitik and, at the end of the day, simple self-belief.
The Empire to me a key battle-line, because it is an essential part of British experience 1600-1960. It’s impossible to imagine the UK without it.
And therefore a total repudiation and condemnation of it really calls into question whether the UK itself has any legitimacy.
Exactly, which is no doubt the agenda some secretly harbour.
Destroying the sense of the nation state makes it easier to be subsumed into a United States of Europe.
Absolute lunatic comment.
The end goal of the repudiation that I talk about is the end of Western order itself, to be replaced presumably by some breed of indigenous, socialist republics.
To the extent this aids any realistic geopolitical goal, it is China’s.
I think you're right about the overall view, I'm giving the Starmer view on why this is desirable. His destruction of the UK as a nation state of which we can be proud of is to ensure when we get asked again we will definitely say yes and it paves the way for European nations to be replaced by a United States of Europe.
The EU project is ambiguous because to some, it's the first stage towards a global federation, but to others, it's a vehicle for Europe to reassert itself in the world. Of course it could also be neither of these things and instead just be part of the problem contributing to Europe's decline.
I regret my Leave vote because of how poor a job was done afterwards, which I doubt will now be improved, but part of the reason I voted Leave in the first place was because whilst the dream of the EU sounds great, the reality of it does not and will never live up to that by the very nature of the organisation.
Torture in the Mau Mau Uprising was against British law and cultural norms. It was deservedly a case for compensation.
Though I note no compensation has been provided by the Mau Mau to Britain for its various atrocities.
I think we are nearly at the point in this discussion where the slaves and independence fighters of Empire should doff their caps to us in gratitude to us for enslaving them and stealing their lands.
Oh God, you are such a dick.
I enjoy a good barney on pb as much as the next person, but I must admit I do find the somewhat confected outrage equating Chagos, discussions about reparations etc to the destruction of the UK as a nation state a little...dull.
I will hold my hands up as someone who, in an ideal world, would like to see the dissolution of national-level states in favour of much smaller (say US-sized) states in a sort of global federal system. However, in the actual world we inhabit, such a move would be nonsense as it would just cede power to China, India and USA, none of which strike me as particularly reliable at present.
However much you dislike Starmer, this isn't remotely what he's doing.
We do, however, have a crisis of legitimacy in the West. Sticking our ears full of cotton wool and loudly singing "we won't talk about the wealth we have gained off the back of empire" is only going to consign us to irrelevance.
Engaging in debates about eg reparations and then making a considered, ethical decision that is within the dictates of international law should be welcomed by anyone who hopes the UK will still have a global role in 50 years time, as it is more likely to help us retain global soft power.
That's not to say that Starmer is doing or will do this well. But the incoherent rage from some on here about every foreign policy move of his is lamentable in my view (not looking particularly at you CR, much of what you write is thoughtful and interesting, although I realise this is in reply to a rather incoherent and rageful post in this particular case).
It’s obvious from the reporting that the UK suffered a diplomatic defeat at the Commonwealth.
Reparations were not even on the agenda, so the UK has been “hijacked”. And despite Starmer’s pleading, it is not obvious at all the money is not to be discussed.
Starmer said none of the discussions at the summit had concerned money.
“Well, no figure,” Frederick Mitchell, the foreign minister of the Bahamas told BBC Radio’s Today programme on Saturday. “We’ll see what happens going forward.”
He said he hoped a report on the issue would follow, which nations would discuss in the future. Mitchell also mentioned the UK government’s decision in 2013 to recognise the torture of Kenyans by British colonial forces during the Mau Mau uprising, which resulted in a £20m payout. “I have no doubt …. that the arc of history always goes in the right direction,” he said.
The Commonwealth no longer does our bidding, and why should it? After all KC3 is Head of State for a number of the countries pursuing reparations too. Sure we could have thrown our toys out of the pram and refused to sign the declaration, but that pretty much would bang in the final nail in its coffin.
We cannot praise the democratic institutions and rule of law that we bequeathed to the Commonwealth, then refuse to respond to those governments. Either we left them something valid, or we did not.
I don’t think the Commonwealth should do the UK’s bidding. That would be bizarre.
I simply note the UK’s diplomatic defeat on this issue.
The last government created a precedent, it seems:
"Mitchell also mentioned the UK government’s decision in 2013 to recognise the torture of Kenyans by British colonial forces during the Mau Mau uprising, which resulted in a £20m payout."
When you are in a minority you are not going to get your way. I guess the issue is whether you then walk out or just play along knowing you cannot be forced to do anything you do not want to do.
You don't walk out. You just say "No. You must be joking!" and sit there. You certainly don't sign a declaration that opens the door. You refuse to sign. Simple.
That's pretty much the same as walking out. Basically, you leave without a communique. I suspect that is what a lot of previous UK governments would have done. This one chose not to grandstand. Unlike others on here, I don't see that as an act of treason. We decide whether the door opens. It's all in our hands.
They all leave without a communique. It's not us walking out. They all walk out. Not agreeing to reparations is not grandstanding. It's resisting blackmail and I'm sure would have the support of the vast majority in the UK. No doubt there will be a poll soon.
As much as you may wish it otherwise, the UK government has not agreed to reparations.
It has agreed the following:
"Heads, noting calls for discussions on reparatory justice with regard to the trans-Atlantic trade in enslaved Africans and chattel enslavement and recognising the importance of this matter to member states of the Commonwealth, the majority of which share common historical experiences in relation to this abhorrent trade, agreed that the time has come for a meaningful, truthful and respectful conversation towards forging a common future based on equity. Heads further agreed to continue playing an active role in bringing about such inclusive conversations addressing these harms."
So Starmer has agreed to a meaningful conversation on reparations, because that's what it's about. What else?
Perhaps it's Starmer kicking the discussion into the long grass out of politeness.
I would simply say No. People alive now had nothing to do with slavery on either side. It's a scam. I wouldn't raise expectations. I'd shut them down.
An impolitic if actually more reasonable response, so it's understandable he did not do it. For a PM conceding ground on in it, probably hoping it is a can kicking situation, is a no brainer compared to all game playing the other heads of government would make out of a flat refusal.
It’s obvious from the reporting that the UK suffered a diplomatic defeat at the Commonwealth.
Reparations were not even on the agenda, so the UK has been “hijacked”. And despite Starmer’s pleading, it is not obvious at all the money is not to be discussed.
Starmer said none of the discussions at the summit had concerned money.
“Well, no figure,” Frederick Mitchell, the foreign minister of the Bahamas told BBC Radio’s Today programme on Saturday. “We’ll see what happens going forward.”
He said he hoped a report on the issue would follow, which nations would discuss in the future. Mitchell also mentioned the UK government’s decision in 2013 to recognise the torture of Kenyans by British colonial forces during the Mau Mau uprising, which resulted in a £20m payout. “I have no doubt …. that the arc of history always goes in the right direction,” he said.
The Commonwealth no longer does our bidding, and why should it? After all KC3 is Head of State for a number of the countries pursuing reparations too. Sure we could have thrown our toys out of the pram and refused to sign the declaration, but that pretty much would bang in the final nail in its coffin.
We cannot praise the democratic institutions and rule of law that we bequeathed to the Commonwealth, then refuse to respond to those governments. Either we left them something valid, or we did not.
I don’t think the Commonwealth should do the UK’s bidding. That would be bizarre.
I simply note the UK’s diplomatic defeat on this issue.
The last government created a precedent, it seems:
"Mitchell also mentioned the UK government’s decision in 2013 to recognise the torture of Kenyans by British colonial forces during the Mau Mau uprising, which resulted in a £20m payout."
When you are in a minority you are not going to get your way. I guess the issue is whether you then walk out or just play along knowing you cannot be forced to do anything you do not want to do.
You don't walk out. You just say "No. You must be joking!" and sit there. You certainly don't sign a declaration that opens the door. You refuse to sign. Simple.
That's pretty much the same as walking out. Basically, you leave without a communique. I suspect that is what a lot of previous UK governments would have done. This one chose not to grandstand. Unlike others on here, I don't see that as an act of treason. We decide whether the door opens. It's all in our hands.
If you welcome turning it into a political question domestically, then you shouldn't complain if the debate goes in a direction you don't like.
I would be very surprised if it becomes a big issue domestically. All the government will say is there will be no reparations. Some on the right will accuse the government of treason and wanting to dismantle the nation state and they will look ridiculous and the world will turn.
I agree that it won't become a big issue domestically. The reparation demand just irritates me. Grifting. Sod off.
I just want to point out that when the Chagos Surrender happened and I went ape-shit on here, there was a lot of scoffing and “oh who cares it’s a tiny atoll you’ve never heard of before”
I responded that
1. I had definitely heard of it
2. The surrender was totally unnecessary and a strategic error of enormous proportions
And
3. One of the many reasons it was such a strategic error was that it would encourage all our enemies to take a run at us, perceiving us as weak and spineless with a stupid cowardly leader willing to yield to anything
Et voila
Indeed, there's no way that reparations or anything as stupid as that would be on the agenda had we not just paid billions to Mauritius to take the Chagos Islands off our hands. The Carribbean sense weakness and Starmer appointing reparations supporters like Lammy such high roles is another reason they know they can go for it and win. Starmer is a cuck.
Starmer should just have said “nah. Fuck off, I’m not signing that, it commits us to reparations”
But of course he’s incapable of showing backbone because he doesn’t have one, and deep down he agrees that Britain is evil and should pay
And that's the difference between him and Blair. Blair would have just laughed the whole discussion off and told the commonwealth nations to get back in their box because he fundamentally loved this country. Starmer very clearly doesn't, he sees us as part of the evil colonialist axis as so many lefties were indoctrinated to believe when they went to university by Marxist professors.
Could anyone imagine Margaret Thatcher, or even John Major signing it!
I don’t believe he’ll ever commit the UK to paying billions.
What he will do is offer some abject, and completely insincere, apology for slavery, before agreeing to pay symbolic reparations to governments who’ll stick the money in their offshore accounts.
That will set a precedent for anyone with a grudge against the UK to come calling.
One can imagine Cameron taking a similar line if he were PM now. Times have changed since the Thatcher era.
Osborne, yes. Cameron, I think not.
Impossible to imagine a British PM now suggesting, as Cameron did, that he was proud of the Empire. But that was only 2013.
The last 10 years have really been a roller coaster.
So did Blair.
FWIW, I still think the Empire was on balance a good thing - and I don't even think it's on balance, but clearly a good thing.
Why do you think the Empire was a good thing?
The modern world would be unrecognisable without the Empire.
We wouldn't have free liberal democracies like the United States, Canada, New Zealand or Australia nor large multireligious and panethnic democratic states like India and South Africa. We would not have Carribean and African states endeavouring to follow that path. We would not have free international trade, we would not have been able to fight and win WW1 or WW2, we would not have the UN, Human Rights or the rule of law as an international principle. Countries like Singapore and South Korea wouldn't exist and Japan would have taken a different path.
We'd have a world of autocracy instead, with fewer rights, more suffering, more cruelty and less human development. It'd be China, Iran and Russia writ-large. Dictators and Theocracies where might made right.
The handwringing we have now is, I think, in direct relationship to our waning power and influence and is in some sense a response to it: it's to try and keep us at the centre of ongoing geopolitical conversations - ones that our rivals absolutely don't respect and, in fact, use to hold us in contempt.
I just want to point out that when the Chagos Surrender happened and I went ape-shit on here, there was a lot of scoffing and “oh who cares it’s a tiny atoll you’ve never heard of before”
I responded that
1. I had definitely heard of it
2. The surrender was totally unnecessary and a strategic error of enormous proportions
And
3. One of the many reasons it was such a strategic error was that it would encourage all our enemies to take a run at us, perceiving us as weak and spineless with a stupid cowardly leader willing to yield to anything
Et voila
Indeed, there's no way that reparations or anything as stupid as that would be on the agenda had we not just paid billions to Mauritius to take the Chagos Islands off our hands. The Carribbean sense weakness and Starmer appointing reparations supporters like Lammy such high roles is another reason they know they can go for it and win. Starmer is a cuck.
Starmer should just have said “nah. Fuck off, I’m not signing that, it commits us to reparations”
But of course he’s incapable of showing backbone because he doesn’t have one, and deep down he agrees that Britain is evil and should pay
And that's the difference between him and Blair. Blair would have just laughed the whole discussion off and told the commonwealth nations to get back in their box because he fundamentally loved this country. Starmer very clearly doesn't, he sees us as part of the evil colonialist axis as so many lefties were indoctrinated to believe when they went to university by Marxist professors.
Could anyone imagine Margaret Thatcher, or even John Major signing it!
I don’t believe he’ll ever commit the UK to paying billions.
What he will do is offer some abject, and completely insincere, apology for slavery, before agreeing to pay symbolic reparations to governments who’ll stick the money in their offshore accounts.
That will set a precedent for anyone with a grudge against the UK to come calling.
One can imagine Cameron taking a similar line if he were PM now. Times have changed since the Thatcher era.
Osborne, yes. Cameron, I think not.
Impossible to imagine a British PM now suggesting, as Cameron did, that he was proud of the Empire. But that was only 2013.
The last 10 years have really been a roller coaster.
I think it's strange that as the world moves back towards the pre-1945 view that the strong do as they will, the weak as they must, our own leaders are in complete denial about it.
That’s the point I made yesterday about our increasingly Hobbesian world.
I don’t wish for Britain to surrender its long-standing support for international institutions, but there seems to be gross lack of realpolitik and, at the end of the day, simple self-belief.
The Empire to me a key battle-line, because it is an essential part of British experience 1600-1960. It’s impossible to imagine the UK without it.
And therefore a total repudiation and condemnation of it really calls into question whether the UK itself has any legitimacy.
Exactly, which is no doubt the agenda some secretly harbour.
Destroying the sense of the nation state makes it easier to be subsumed into a United States of Europe.
Absolute lunatic comment.
The end goal of the repudiation that I talk about is the end of Western order itself, to be replaced presumably by some breed of indigenous, socialist republics.
To the extent this aids any realistic geopolitical goal, it is China’s.
I think you're right about the overall view, I'm giving the Starmer view on why this is desirable. His destruction of the UK as a nation state of which we can be proud of is to ensure when we get asked again we will definitely say yes and it paves the way for European nations to be replaced by a United States of Europe.
The EU project is ambiguous because to some, it's the first stage towards a global federation, but to others, it's a vehicle for Europe to reassert itself in the world. Of course it could also be neither of these things and instead just be part of the problem contributing to Europe's decline.
I regret my Leave vote because of how poor a job was done afterwards, which I doubt will now be improved, but part of the reason I voted Leave in the first place was because whilst the dream of the EU sounds great, the reality of it does not and will never live up to that by the very nature of the organisation.
But does anything live up to a dream?
No, but I felt and still feel that the EU is moribund, consumed with pettiness, and hamstrung by the inherent conflict between those who really would like a united states of europe and the national governments who naturally resist that, which helps lead to the first two problems. This leads to a institutional with both an inflated sense of importance, prone to grandiose posturing, but levers which prevent it from evolving into a true power that some want.
But being in is still better than being out, especially when we're staring down the barrel of long term decline.
I just want to point out that when the Chagos Surrender happened and I went ape-shit on here, there was a lot of scoffing and “oh who cares it’s a tiny atoll you’ve never heard of before”
I responded that
1. I had definitely heard of it
2. The surrender was totally unnecessary and a strategic error of enormous proportions
And
3. One of the many reasons it was such a strategic error was that it would encourage all our enemies to take a run at us, perceiving us as weak and spineless with a stupid cowardly leader willing to yield to anything
Et voila
Indeed, there's no way that reparations or anything as stupid as that would be on the agenda had we not just paid billions to Mauritius to take the Chagos Islands off our hands. The Carribbean sense weakness and Starmer appointing reparations supporters like Lammy such high roles is another reason they know they can go for it and win. Starmer is a cuck.
Starmer should just have said “nah. Fuck off, I’m not signing that, it commits us to reparations”
But of course he’s incapable of showing backbone because he doesn’t have one, and deep down he agrees that Britain is evil and should pay
And that's the difference between him and Blair. Blair would have just laughed the whole discussion off and told the commonwealth nations to get back in their box because he fundamentally loved this country. Starmer very clearly doesn't, he sees us as part of the evil colonialist axis as so many lefties were indoctrinated to believe when they went to university by Marxist professors.
Could anyone imagine Margaret Thatcher, or even John Major signing it!
I don’t believe he’ll ever commit the UK to paying billions.
What he will do is offer some abject, and completely insincere, apology for slavery, before agreeing to pay symbolic reparations to governments who’ll stick the money in their offshore accounts.
That will set a precedent for anyone with a grudge against the UK to come calling.
One can imagine Cameron taking a similar line if he were PM now. Times have changed since the Thatcher era.
Osborne, yes. Cameron, I think not.
Impossible to imagine a British PM now suggesting, as Cameron did, that he was proud of the Empire. But that was only 2013.
The last 10 years have really been a roller coaster.
So did Blair.
FWIW, I still think the Empire was on balance a good thing - and I don't even think it's on balance, but clearly a good thing.
Why do you think the Empire was a good thing?
The modern world would be unrecognisable without the Empire.
We wouldn't have free liberal democracies like the United States, Canada, New Zealand or Australia nor large multireligious and panethnic democratic states like India and South Africa. We would not have Carribean and African states endeavouring to follow that path. We would not have free international trade, we would not have been able to fight and win WW1 or WW2, we would not have the UN, Human Rights or the rule of law as an international principle. Countries like Singapore and South Korea wouldn't exist and Japan would have taken a different path.
We'd have a world of autocracy instead, with fewer rights, more suffering, more cruelty and less human development. It'd be China, Iran and Russia writ-large. Dictators and Theocracies where might made right.
The handwringing we have now is, I think, in direct relationship to our waning power and influence and is in some sense a response to it: it's to try and keep us at the centre of ongoing geopolitical conversations - ones that our rivals absolutely don't respect and, in fact, use to hold us in contempt.
Whilst I don't necessarily agree with your claim that democracy wouldn't have developed globally without empire, that is one of the better defences of the project that I have seen. Chapeau.
I just want to point out that when the Chagos Surrender happened and I went ape-shit on here, there was a lot of scoffing and “oh who cares it’s a tiny atoll you’ve never heard of before”
I responded that
1. I had definitely heard of it
2. The surrender was totally unnecessary and a strategic error of enormous proportions
And
3. One of the many reasons it was such a strategic error was that it would encourage all our enemies to take a run at us, perceiving us as weak and spineless with a stupid cowardly leader willing to yield to anything
Et voila
Indeed, there's no way that reparations or anything as stupid as that would be on the agenda had we not just paid billions to Mauritius to take the Chagos Islands off our hands. The Carribbean sense weakness and Starmer appointing reparations supporters like Lammy such high roles is another reason they know they can go for it and win. Starmer is a cuck.
Starmer should just have said “nah. Fuck off, I’m not signing that, it commits us to reparations”
But of course he’s incapable of showing backbone because he doesn’t have one, and deep down he agrees that Britain is evil and should pay
And that's the difference between him and Blair. Blair would have just laughed the whole discussion off and told the commonwealth nations to get back in their box because he fundamentally loved this country. Starmer very clearly doesn't, he sees us as part of the evil colonialist axis as so many lefties were indoctrinated to believe when they went to university by Marxist professors.
Could anyone imagine Margaret Thatcher, or even John Major signing it!
I don’t believe he’ll ever commit the UK to paying billions.
What he will do is offer some abject, and completely insincere, apology for slavery, before agreeing to pay symbolic reparations to governments who’ll stick the money in their offshore accounts.
That will set a precedent for anyone with a grudge against the UK to come calling.
One can imagine Cameron taking a similar line if he were PM now. Times have changed since the Thatcher era.
Its a further forty years since the colonial era.
A further forty years from when the former colonies becoming responsible for their own outcomes.
Yes but general awareness (here) of the scope and legacy of slavery was far less then than now.
Such as its clear now that the current inhabitants of the former British West Indies are among the great beneficiaries of the legacy of slavery.
Barbados and Bahamas are better places than Benin and Burkina Faso.
West Africa was probably the region most damaged by slavery. Its working age population, and that of the Central African hinterland, was emptied out many times over. By European traders to the West and Arab traders to the East.
And its still being emptied with people traffickers being the modern slave traders.
The Nigerian nurses at the local hospital being another aspect of human resources taken from their homeland to benefit richer countries.
A few years back I was told it was racist to want to train 100%+ of the NHS staff requirement in the U.K.
Have times changed?
Yes, now it’s racist to import the nurses from Nairobi, Lagos, Manila etc. because it means their own populations don’t see the nurses working there.
Dare I suggest that it’s a lot cheaper for the NHS to fund training courses for nurses and doctors in the 3rd world, than it is to fund them in the UK, especially in times of a massive shortage of these skills.
Yet it's ok to import tech entrepreneurs from Africa, because they benefit the UK...
Is it our job to have an immigration policy that principally benefits the UK? Or that mainly benefits other countries?
Fwiw, I suspect working holiday visas for young people from the third world might be the best way of achieving the second option. Allow people from Africa to learn skills and return. A lot of the Polish tech industry is run by people who spent five years in the UK developing skills, who then returned to Poland.
It’s obvious from the reporting that the UK suffered a diplomatic defeat at the Commonwealth.
Reparations were not even on the agenda, so the UK has been “hijacked”. And despite Starmer’s pleading, it is not obvious at all the money is not to be discussed.
Starmer said none of the discussions at the summit had concerned money.
“Well, no figure,” Frederick Mitchell, the foreign minister of the Bahamas told BBC Radio’s Today programme on Saturday. “We’ll see what happens going forward.”
He said he hoped a report on the issue would follow, which nations would discuss in the future. Mitchell also mentioned the UK government’s decision in 2013 to recognise the torture of Kenyans by British colonial forces during the Mau Mau uprising, which resulted in a £20m payout. “I have no doubt …. that the arc of history always goes in the right direction,” he said.
The Commonwealth no longer does our bidding, and why should it? After all KC3 is Head of State for a number of the countries pursuing reparations too. Sure we could have thrown our toys out of the pram and refused to sign the declaration, but that pretty much would bang in the final nail in its coffin.
We cannot praise the democratic institutions and rule of law that we bequeathed to the Commonwealth, then refuse to respond to those governments. Either we left them something valid, or we did not.
I don’t think the Commonwealth should do the UK’s bidding. That would be bizarre.
I simply note the UK’s diplomatic defeat on this issue.
The last government created a precedent, it seems:
"Mitchell also mentioned the UK government’s decision in 2013 to recognise the torture of Kenyans by British colonial forces during the Mau Mau uprising, which resulted in a £20m payout."
When you are in a minority you are not going to get your way. I guess the issue is whether you then walk out or just play along knowing you cannot be forced to do anything you do not want to do.
You don't walk out. You just say "No. You must be joking!" and sit there. You certainly don't sign a declaration that opens the door. You refuse to sign. Simple.
That's pretty much the same as walking out. Basically, you leave without a communique. I suspect that is what a lot of previous UK governments would have done. This one chose not to grandstand. Unlike others on here, I don't see that as an act of treason. We decide whether the door opens. It's all in our hands.
If you welcome turning it into a political question domestically, then you shouldn't complain if the debate goes in a direction you don't like.
I would be very surprised if it becomes a big issue domestically. All the government will say is there will be no reparations. Some on the right will accuse the government of treason and wanting to dismantle the nation state and they will look ridiculous and the world will turn.
The government has already failed to say this in an unequivocal enough fashion. It's now on the agenda, like it or not.
If the right wants to focus on the UK potentially paying reparations for the next few years I will welcome that as they will make themselves look even more cut off from reality than they do already.
Even more so if they want to argue that the slaves should be grateful for all the kind benefits we gave them.
I have seen such absurdity argued by Republicans in the USA, so not surprised to see the same amongst their fellow travellers here.
It is just an excuse for some lazy gits to try and grift.
I just want to point out that when the Chagos Surrender happened and I went ape-shit on here, there was a lot of scoffing and “oh who cares it’s a tiny atoll you’ve never heard of before”
I responded that
1. I had definitely heard of it
2. The surrender was totally unnecessary and a strategic error of enormous proportions
And
3. One of the many reasons it was such a strategic error was that it would encourage all our enemies to take a run at us, perceiving us as weak and spineless with a stupid cowardly leader willing to yield to anything
Et voila
Indeed, there's no way that reparations or anything as stupid as that would be on the agenda had we not just paid billions to Mauritius to take the Chagos Islands off our hands. The Carribbean sense weakness and Starmer appointing reparations supporters like Lammy such high roles is another reason they know they can go for it and win. Starmer is a cuck.
Starmer should just have said “nah. Fuck off, I’m not signing that, it commits us to reparations”
But of course he’s incapable of showing backbone because he doesn’t have one, and deep down he agrees that Britain is evil and should pay
And that's the difference between him and Blair. Blair would have just laughed the whole discussion off and told the commonwealth nations to get back in their box because he fundamentally loved this country. Starmer very clearly doesn't, he sees us as part of the evil colonialist axis as so many lefties were indoctrinated to believe when they went to university by Marxist professors.
Could anyone imagine Margaret Thatcher, or even John Major signing it!
I don’t believe he’ll ever commit the UK to paying billions.
What he will do is offer some abject, and completely insincere, apology for slavery, before agreeing to pay symbolic reparations to governments who’ll stick the money in their offshore accounts.
That will set a precedent for anyone with a grudge against the UK to come calling.
One can imagine Cameron taking a similar line if he were PM now. Times have changed since the Thatcher era.
Osborne, yes. Cameron, I think not.
Impossible to imagine a British PM now suggesting, as Cameron did, that he was proud of the Empire. But that was only 2013.
The last 10 years have really been a roller coaster.
So did Blair.
FWIW, I still think the Empire was on balance a good thing - and I don't even think it's on balance, but clearly a good thing.
Why do you think the Empire was a good thing?
The modern world would be unrecognisable without the Empire.
We wouldn't have free liberal democracies like the United States, Canada, New Zealand or Australia nor large multireligious and panethnic democratic states like India and South Africa. We would not have Carribean and African states endeavouring to follow that path. We would not have free international trade, we would not have been able to fight and win WW1 or WW2, we would not have the UN, Human Rights or the rule of law as an international principle. Countries like Singapore and South Korea wouldn't exist and Japan would have taken a different path.
We'd have a world of autocracy instead, with fewer rights, more suffering, more cruelty and less human development. It'd be China, Iran and Russia writ-large. Dictators and Theocracies where might made right.
The handwringing we have now is, I think, in direct relationship to our waning power and influence and is in some sense a response to it: it's to try and keep us at the centre of ongoing geopolitical conversations - ones that our rivals absolutely don't respect and, in fact, use to hold us in contempt.
I don't agree with all these points, but I do think we have a bizarre idea that handwringing gains us something either in terms of our national progression or in geopolitical terms, and I really don't think that is the case.
And I do think handwringing is distinct from acknowledging things, but the former is what is pushed.
It’s obvious from the reporting that the UK suffered a diplomatic defeat at the Commonwealth.
Reparations were not even on the agenda, so the UK has been “hijacked”. And despite Starmer’s pleading, it is not obvious at all the money is not to be discussed.
Starmer said none of the discussions at the summit had concerned money.
“Well, no figure,” Frederick Mitchell, the foreign minister of the Bahamas told BBC Radio’s Today programme on Saturday. “We’ll see what happens going forward.”
He said he hoped a report on the issue would follow, which nations would discuss in the future. Mitchell also mentioned the UK government’s decision in 2013 to recognise the torture of Kenyans by British colonial forces during the Mau Mau uprising, which resulted in a £20m payout. “I have no doubt …. that the arc of history always goes in the right direction,” he said.
The Commonwealth no longer does our bidding, and why should it? After all KC3 is Head of State for a number of the countries pursuing reparations too. Sure we could have thrown our toys out of the pram and refused to sign the declaration, but that pretty much would bang in the final nail in its coffin.
We cannot praise the democratic institutions and rule of law that we bequeathed to the Commonwealth, then refuse to respond to those governments. Either we left them something valid, or we did not.
I don’t think the Commonwealth should do the UK’s bidding. That would be bizarre.
I simply note the UK’s diplomatic defeat on this issue.
The last government created a precedent, it seems:
"Mitchell also mentioned the UK government’s decision in 2013 to recognise the torture of Kenyans by British colonial forces during the Mau Mau uprising, which resulted in a £20m payout."
When you are in a minority you are not going to get your way. I guess the issue is whether you then walk out or just play along knowing you cannot be forced to do anything you do not want to do.
You don't walk out. You just say "No. You must be joking!" and sit there. You certainly don't sign a declaration that opens the door. You refuse to sign. Simple.
That's pretty much the same as walking out. Basically, you leave without a communique. I suspect that is what a lot of previous UK governments would have done. This one chose not to grandstand. Unlike others on here, I don't see that as an act of treason. We decide whether the door opens. It's all in our hands.
If you welcome turning it into a political question domestically, then you shouldn't complain if the debate goes in a direction you don't like.
I would be very surprised if it becomes a big issue domestically. All the government will say is there will be no reparations. Some on the right will accuse the government of treason and wanting to dismantle the nation state and they will look ridiculous and the world will turn.
I agree that it won't become a big issue domestically. The reparation demand just irritates me. Grifting. Sod off.
Who was it who said that diplomacy is the art of telling someone to "go to Hell" in such a way that they look forward to the trip?
It is an irritating grift, sure, but not one the British government, any British government, could do much about beyond this.
(One of the election timelines involved Rishi taking some time off campaigning for this summit. Or calling the election now, off the back of it. Presumably he couldn't have signed up to this communique, but that would have also had political costs.)
I just want to point out that when the Chagos Surrender happened and I went ape-shit on here, there was a lot of scoffing and “oh who cares it’s a tiny atoll you’ve never heard of before”
I responded that
1. I had definitely heard of it
2. The surrender was totally unnecessary and a strategic error of enormous proportions
And
3. One of the many reasons it was such a strategic error was that it would encourage all our enemies to take a run at us, perceiving us as weak and spineless with a stupid cowardly leader willing to yield to anything
Et voila
Indeed, there's no way that reparations or anything as stupid as that would be on the agenda had we not just paid billions to Mauritius to take the Chagos Islands off our hands. The Carribbean sense weakness and Starmer appointing reparations supporters like Lammy such high roles is another reason they know they can go for it and win. Starmer is a cuck.
Starmer should just have said “nah. Fuck off, I’m not signing that, it commits us to reparations”
But of course he’s incapable of showing backbone because he doesn’t have one, and deep down he agrees that Britain is evil and should pay
And that's the difference between him and Blair. Blair would have just laughed the whole discussion off and told the commonwealth nations to get back in their box because he fundamentally loved this country. Starmer very clearly doesn't, he sees us as part of the evil colonialist axis as so many lefties were indoctrinated to believe when they went to university by Marxist professors.
Could anyone imagine Margaret Thatcher, or even John Major signing it!
I don’t believe he’ll ever commit the UK to paying billions.
What he will do is offer some abject, and completely insincere, apology for slavery, before agreeing to pay symbolic reparations to governments who’ll stick the money in their offshore accounts.
That will set a precedent for anyone with a grudge against the UK to come calling.
One can imagine Cameron taking a similar line if he were PM now. Times have changed since the Thatcher era.
Its a further forty years since the colonial era.
A further forty years from when the former colonies becoming responsible for their own outcomes.
Yes but general awareness (here) of the scope and legacy of slavery was far less then than now.
Such as its clear now that the current inhabitants of the former British West Indies are among the great beneficiaries of the legacy of slavery.
Barbados and Bahamas are better places than Benin and Burkina Faso.
West Africa was probably the region most damaged by slavery. Its working age population, and that of the Central African hinterland, was emptied out many times over. By European traders to the West and Arab traders to the East.
And its still being emptied with people traffickers being the modern slave traders.
The Nigerian nurses at the local hospital being another aspect of human resources taken from their homeland to benefit richer countries.
A few years back I was told it was racist to want to train 100%+ of the NHS staff requirement in the U.K.
Have times changed?
Yes, now it’s racist to import the nurses from Nairobi, Lagos, Manila etc. because it means their own populations don’t see the nurses working there.
Dare I suggest that it’s a lot cheaper for the NHS to fund training courses for nurses and doctors in the 3rd world, than it is to fund them in the UK, especially in times of a massive shortage of these skills.
Yet it's ok to import tech entrepreneurs from Africa, because they benefit the UK...
Is it our job to have an immigration policy that principally benefits the UK? Or that mainly benefits other countries?
Fwiw, I suspect working holiday visas for young people from the third world might be the best way of achieving the second option. Allow people from Africa to learn skills and return. A lot of the Polish tech industry is run by people who spent five years in the UK developing skills, who then returned to Poland.
You could combine both ideas. Something like: the UK will fund training courses for nurses in eg Nigeria, requiring a return of service of a 5 year posting in UK after graduation, before qualified and experienced nurses then return to Nigeria, building capacity and expertise there.
I just want to point out that when the Chagos Surrender happened and I went ape-shit on here, there was a lot of scoffing and “oh who cares it’s a tiny atoll you’ve never heard of before”
I responded that
1. I had definitely heard of it
2. The surrender was totally unnecessary and a strategic error of enormous proportions
And
3. One of the many reasons it was such a strategic error was that it would encourage all our enemies to take a run at us, perceiving us as weak and spineless with a stupid cowardly leader willing to yield to anything
Et voila
Indeed, there's no way that reparations or anything as stupid as that would be on the agenda had we not just paid billions to Mauritius to take the Chagos Islands off our hands. The Carribbean sense weakness and Starmer appointing reparations supporters like Lammy such high roles is another reason they know they can go for it and win. Starmer is a cuck.
Starmer should just have said “nah. Fuck off, I’m not signing that, it commits us to reparations”
But of course he’s incapable of showing backbone because he doesn’t have one, and deep down he agrees that Britain is evil and should pay
And that's the difference between him and Blair. Blair would have just laughed the whole discussion off and told the commonwealth nations to get back in their box because he fundamentally loved this country. Starmer very clearly doesn't, he sees us as part of the evil colonialist axis as so many lefties were indoctrinated to believe when they went to university by Marxist professors.
Could anyone imagine Margaret Thatcher, or even John Major signing it!
I don’t believe he’ll ever commit the UK to paying billions.
What he will do is offer some abject, and completely insincere, apology for slavery, before agreeing to pay symbolic reparations to governments who’ll stick the money in their offshore accounts.
That will set a precedent for anyone with a grudge against the UK to come calling.
One can imagine Cameron taking a similar line if he were PM now. Times have changed since the Thatcher era.
Osborne, yes. Cameron, I think not.
Impossible to imagine a British PM now suggesting, as Cameron did, that he was proud of the Empire. But that was only 2013.
The last 10 years have really been a roller coaster.
I think it's strange that as the world moves back towards the pre-1945 view that the strong do as they will, the weak as they must, our own leaders are in complete denial about it.
That’s the point I made yesterday about our increasingly Hobbesian world.
I don’t wish for Britain to surrender its long-standing support for international institutions, but there seems to be gross lack of realpolitik and, at the end of the day, simple self-belief.
The Empire to me a key battle-line, because it is an essential part of British experience 1600-1960. It’s impossible to imagine the UK without it.
And therefore a total repudiation and condemnation of it really calls into question whether the UK itself has any legitimacy.
Exactly, which is no doubt the agenda some secretly harbour.
Destroying the sense of the nation state makes it easier to be subsumed into a United States of Europe.
Absolute lunatic comment.
The end goal of the repudiation that I talk about is the end of Western order itself, to be replaced presumably by some breed of indigenous, socialist republics.
To the extent this aids any realistic geopolitical goal, it is China’s.
I think you're right about the overall view, I'm giving the Starmer view on why this is desirable. His destruction of the UK as a nation state of which we can be proud of is to ensure when we get asked again we will definitely say yes and it paves the way for European nations to be replaced by a United States of Europe.
The best way to look at all this, depressing as it is; is that it will hasten the birth of something new - IE something that completely destroys the labour party. The memes will be brewing already: pensioners dying to fund reparations at the insistence of its left wing MP's, etc.
Labour in power will be depicted as all the bad parts of Corbynism plus punitive austerity plus a bit of pointless authoritarianism thrown in. The labour party will just collapse.
But it would help if the depiction overlapped at least a little with reality. Otherwise the risk is it will look a bit ranty and deranged. I know Donald Trump might be showing how "ranty and deranged" can do the trick but I don't see that working so well over here.
Torture in the Mau Mau Uprising was against British law and cultural norms. It was deservedly a case for compensation.
Though I note no compensation has been provided by the Mau Mau to Britain for its various atrocities.
I think we are nearly at the point in this discussion where the slaves and independence fighters of Empire should doff their caps to us in gratitude to us for enslaving them and stealing their lands.
Oh God, you are such a dick.
I enjoy a good barney on pb as much as the next person, but I must admit I do find the somewhat confected outrage equating Chagos, discussions about reparations etc to the destruction of the UK as a nation state a little...dull.
I will hold my hands up as someone who, in an ideal world, would like to see the dissolution of national-level states in favour of much smaller (say US-sized) states in a sort of global federal system. However, in the actual world we inhabit, such a move would be nonsense as it would just cede power to China, India and USA, none of which strike me as particularly reliable at present.
However much you dislike Starmer, this isn't remotely what he's doing.
We do, however, have a crisis of legitimacy in the West. Sticking our ears full of cotton wool and loudly singing "we won't talk about the wealth we have gained off the back of empire" is only going to consign us to irrelevance.
Engaging in debates about eg reparations and then making a considered, ethical decision that is within the dictates of international law should be welcomed by anyone who hopes the UK will still have a global role in 50 years time, as it is more likely to help us retain global soft power.
That's not to say that Starmer is doing or will do this well. But the incoherent rage from some on here about every foreign policy move of his is lamentable in my view (not looking particularly at you CR, much of what you write is thoughtful and interesting, although I realise this is in reply to a rather incoherent and rageful post in this particular case).
He is a weak useless woke twat, needs to grow a pair and tell some of these grifting fcukwits where to get off.
It’s obvious from the reporting that the UK suffered a diplomatic defeat at the Commonwealth.
Reparations were not even on the agenda, so the UK has been “hijacked”. And despite Starmer’s pleading, it is not obvious at all the money is not to be discussed.
Starmer said none of the discussions at the summit had concerned money.
“Well, no figure,” Frederick Mitchell, the foreign minister of the Bahamas told BBC Radio’s Today programme on Saturday. “We’ll see what happens going forward.”
He said he hoped a report on the issue would follow, which nations would discuss in the future. Mitchell also mentioned the UK government’s decision in 2013 to recognise the torture of Kenyans by British colonial forces during the Mau Mau uprising, which resulted in a £20m payout. “I have no doubt …. that the arc of history always goes in the right direction,” he said.
The Commonwealth no longer does our bidding, and why should it? After all KC3 is Head of State for a number of the countries pursuing reparations too. Sure we could have thrown our toys out of the pram and refused to sign the declaration, but that pretty much would bang in the final nail in its coffin.
We cannot praise the democratic institutions and rule of law that we bequeathed to the Commonwealth, then refuse to respond to those governments. Either we left them something valid, or we did not.
I don’t think the Commonwealth should do the UK’s bidding. That would be bizarre.
I simply note the UK’s diplomatic defeat on this issue.
The last government created a precedent, it seems:
"Mitchell also mentioned the UK government’s decision in 2013 to recognise the torture of Kenyans by British colonial forces during the Mau Mau uprising, which resulted in a £20m payout."
When you are in a minority you are not going to get your way. I guess the issue is whether you then walk out or just play along knowing you cannot be forced to do anything you do not want to do.
You don't walk out. You just say "No. You must be joking!" and sit there. You certainly don't sign a declaration that opens the door. You refuse to sign. Simple.
That's pretty much the same as walking out. Basically, you leave without a communique. I suspect that is what a lot of previous UK governments would have done. This one chose not to grandstand. Unlike others on here, I don't see that as an act of treason. We decide whether the door opens. It's all in our hands.
If you welcome turning it into a political question domestically, then you shouldn't complain if the debate goes in a direction you don't like.
I would be very surprised if it becomes a big issue domestically. All the government will say is there will be no reparations. Some on the right will accuse the government of treason and wanting to dismantle the nation state and they will look ridiculous and the world will turn.
The government has already failed to say this in an unequivocal enough fashion. It's now on the agenda, like it or not.
If the right wants to focus on the UK potentially paying reparations for the next few years I will welcome that as they will make themselves look even more cut off from reality than they do already.
Even more so if they want to argue that the slaves should be grateful for all the kind benefits we gave them.
I have seen such absurdity argued by Republicans in the USA, so not surprised to see the same amongst their fellow travellers here.
It is just an excuse for some lazy gits to try and grift.
I lived in the Caribbean for three years. My abiding sense was that not only did they know a lot more about their own history than we are ever taught, but they often seemed to know a lot more about our history than we do. That impression is not diminished by reading the discussion on here!
The first, American, was developed on the back of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, but bequeathed the Declaration of Independence and the Slave Trade Acts of 1807 and 1833.
The second was India, which was essentially farmed for tax. There’s an unresolved debate about whether British “deindustrialised India”, or - via railways and irrigation - left a much better off country. It seems difficult to imagine the fact of the “world’s largest democracy” without the imperial legacy.
The third were the settler colonies - including NZ - where development invariably took place on the sometimes dubious seizure of native lands. Yet (and this colours my opinion of colonialism overall) I think we should surely celebrate the success of these countries in establishing largely happy, liberal, and economically successful polities. Rather indeed a New Zealand than a Haiti.
Sometimes dubious?
In the NZ case, land was usually fairly acquired* In some egregious cases, it was seized or stolen.
*If one can accept that indigenous land can ever be sold.
Some egregious cases?
Maori adopted firearms, Christianity* and land deals with great enthusiasm from early settlers.
The cycle was often:
1) buy guns
2) raid neighbouring tribe
3) sell the other tribes land to the settlers
4) buy more guns.
*so much so that in the land wars the British Imperial forces would attack Maori Pa's on a Sunday, as the Maori would retreat rather than fight on the Sabbath. A bit cheeky of us.
The Māori were extremely good at war. Their forts were as well-designed as anything in contemporary Europe. Which is how they remained a substantial proportion of New Zealand’s population.
I have some seriously disappointing news for the readers of PB. None of us are getting out of here alive. We are all going to die of something. So, hypothetically, if you use exercise and cut out alcohol you will avoid certain conditions and illnesses. But you are still going to die. And, even worse, you increase the risk of losing your marbles before you do which is a truly terrible way to go.
Claiming that we can avoid health costs by better health is a chimera. Individuals may live healthier longer and good luck to them but it simply is not the answer to the exorbitant cost of health care. It simply moves the costs from 1 pile to another. And on that cheerful note I think I am going for a drink.
It’s obvious from the reporting that the UK suffered a diplomatic defeat at the Commonwealth.
Reparations were not even on the agenda, so the UK has been “hijacked”. And despite Starmer’s pleading, it is not obvious at all the money is not to be discussed.
Starmer said none of the discussions at the summit had concerned money.
“Well, no figure,” Frederick Mitchell, the foreign minister of the Bahamas told BBC Radio’s Today programme on Saturday. “We’ll see what happens going forward.”
He said he hoped a report on the issue would follow, which nations would discuss in the future. Mitchell also mentioned the UK government’s decision in 2013 to recognise the torture of Kenyans by British colonial forces during the Mau Mau uprising, which resulted in a £20m payout. “I have no doubt …. that the arc of history always goes in the right direction,” he said.
The Commonwealth no longer does our bidding, and why should it? After all KC3 is Head of State for a number of the countries pursuing reparations too. Sure we could have thrown our toys out of the pram and refused to sign the declaration, but that pretty much would bang in the final nail in its coffin.
We cannot praise the democratic institutions and rule of law that we bequeathed to the Commonwealth, then refuse to respond to those governments. Either we left them something valid, or we did not.
I don’t think the Commonwealth should do the UK’s bidding. That would be bizarre.
I simply note the UK’s diplomatic defeat on this issue.
The last government created a precedent, it seems:
"Mitchell also mentioned the UK government’s decision in 2013 to recognise the torture of Kenyans by British colonial forces during the Mau Mau uprising, which resulted in a £20m payout."
When you are in a minority you are not going to get your way. I guess the issue is whether you then walk out or just play along knowing you cannot be forced to do anything you do not want to do.
You don't walk out. You just say "No. You must be joking!" and sit there. You certainly don't sign a declaration that opens the door. You refuse to sign. Simple.
That's pretty much the same as walking out. Basically, you leave without a communique. I suspect that is what a lot of previous UK governments would have done. This one chose not to grandstand. Unlike others on here, I don't see that as an act of treason. We decide whether the door opens. It's all in our hands.
They all leave without a communique. It's not us walking out. They all walk out. Not agreeing to reparations is not grandstanding. It's resisting blackmail and I'm sure would have the support of the vast majority in the UK. No doubt there will be a poll soon.
As much as you may wish it otherwise, the UK government has not agreed to reparations.
It has agreed the following:
"Heads, noting calls for discussions on reparatory justice with regard to the trans-Atlantic trade in enslaved Africans and chattel enslavement and recognising the importance of this matter to member states of the Commonwealth, the majority of which share common historical experiences in relation to this abhorrent trade, agreed that the time has come for a meaningful, truthful and respectful conversation towards forging a common future based on equity. Heads further agreed to continue playing an active role in bringing about such inclusive conversations addressing these harms."
So Starmer has agreed to a meaningful conversation on reparations, because that's what it's about. What else?
Perhaps it is a cynical kicking of the discussion into the long grass out of politeness.
I would simply say No. People alive now had nothing to do with slavery on either side. It's a scam.
Yep, to me that looks like a kick into the very long grass. It's very clearly not the UK agreeing to pay reparations.
Starmer getting a load of abuse for this but I am pretty sure he will be doing what the FO says is policy on this one.
I just want to point out that when the Chagos Surrender happened and I went ape-shit on here, there was a lot of scoffing and “oh who cares it’s a tiny atoll you’ve never heard of before”
I responded that
1. I had definitely heard of it
2. The surrender was totally unnecessary and a strategic error of enormous proportions
And
3. One of the many reasons it was such a strategic error was that it would encourage all our enemies to take a run at us, perceiving us as weak and spineless with a stupid cowardly leader willing to yield to anything
Et voila
Indeed, there's no way that reparations or anything as stupid as that would be on the agenda had we not just paid billions to Mauritius to take the Chagos Islands off our hands. The Carribbean sense weakness and Starmer appointing reparations supporters like Lammy such high roles is another reason they know they can go for it and win. Starmer is a cuck.
Starmer should just have said “nah. Fuck off, I’m not signing that, it commits us to reparations”
But of course he’s incapable of showing backbone because he doesn’t have one, and deep down he agrees that Britain is evil and should pay
And that's the difference between him and Blair. Blair would have just laughed the whole discussion off and told the commonwealth nations to get back in their box because he fundamentally loved this country. Starmer very clearly doesn't, he sees us as part of the evil colonialist axis as so many lefties were indoctrinated to believe when they went to university by Marxist professors.
Could anyone imagine Margaret Thatcher, or even John Major signing it!
I don’t believe he’ll ever commit the UK to paying billions.
What he will do is offer some abject, and completely insincere, apology for slavery, before agreeing to pay symbolic reparations to governments who’ll stick the money in their offshore accounts.
That will set a precedent for anyone with a grudge against the UK to come calling.
One can imagine Cameron taking a similar line if he were PM now. Times have changed since the Thatcher era.
Its a further forty years since the colonial era.
A further forty years from when the former colonies becoming responsible for their own outcomes.
Yes but general awareness (here) of the scope and legacy of slavery was far less then than now.
Such as its clear now that the current inhabitants of the former British West Indies are among the great beneficiaries of the legacy of slavery.
Barbados and Bahamas are better places than Benin and Burkina Faso.
West Africa was probably the region most damaged by slavery. Its working age population, and that of the Central African hinterland, was emptied out many times over. By European traders to the West and Arab traders to the East.
And its still being emptied with people traffickers being the modern slave traders.
The Nigerian nurses at the local hospital being another aspect of human resources taken from their homeland to benefit richer countries.
A few years back I was told it was racist to want to train 100%+ of the NHS staff requirement in the U.K.
Have times changed?
Yes, now it’s racist to import the nurses from Nairobi, Lagos, Manila etc. because it means their own populations don’t see the nurses working there.
Dare I suggest that it’s a lot cheaper for the NHS to fund training courses for nurses and doctors in the 3rd world, than it is to fund them in the UK, especially in times of a massive shortage of these skills.
Yet it's ok to import tech entrepreneurs from Africa, because they benefit the UK...
Is it our job to have an immigration policy that principally benefits the UK? Or that mainly benefits other countries?
Fwiw, I suspect working holiday visas for young people from the third world might be the best way of achieving the second option. Allow people from Africa to learn skills and return. A lot of the Polish tech industry is run by people who spent five years in the UK developing skills, who then returned to Poland.
That will happen naturally with or without working time limited visas. It happens even within the UK, people come to London to skill up and enjoy the nightlife and move out to the regions.
If we are to have high levels of immigration, and we need it, I prefer the opposite path of encouraging them to integrate into society rather than be transient workers.
It’s obvious from the reporting that the UK suffered a diplomatic defeat at the Commonwealth.
Reparations were not even on the agenda, so the UK has been “hijacked”. And despite Starmer’s pleading, it is not obvious at all the money is not to be discussed.
Starmer said none of the discussions at the summit had concerned money.
“Well, no figure,” Frederick Mitchell, the foreign minister of the Bahamas told BBC Radio’s Today programme on Saturday. “We’ll see what happens going forward.”
He said he hoped a report on the issue would follow, which nations would discuss in the future. Mitchell also mentioned the UK government’s decision in 2013 to recognise the torture of Kenyans by British colonial forces during the Mau Mau uprising, which resulted in a £20m payout. “I have no doubt …. that the arc of history always goes in the right direction,” he said.
The Commonwealth no longer does our bidding, and why should it? After all KC3 is Head of State for a number of the countries pursuing reparations too. Sure we could have thrown our toys out of the pram and refused to sign the declaration, but that pretty much would bang in the final nail in its coffin.
We cannot praise the democratic institutions and rule of law that we bequeathed to the Commonwealth, then refuse to respond to those governments. Either we left them something valid, or we did not.
I don’t think the Commonwealth should do the UK’s bidding. That would be bizarre.
I simply note the UK’s diplomatic defeat on this issue.
The last government created a precedent, it seems:
"Mitchell also mentioned the UK government’s decision in 2013 to recognise the torture of Kenyans by British colonial forces during the Mau Mau uprising, which resulted in a £20m payout."
When you are in a minority you are not going to get your way. I guess the issue is whether you then walk out or just play along knowing you cannot be forced to do anything you do not want to do.
You don't walk out. You just say "No. You must be joking!" and sit there. You certainly don't sign a declaration that opens the door. You refuse to sign. Simple.
That's pretty much the same as walking out. Basically, you leave without a communique. I suspect that is what a lot of previous UK governments would have done. This one chose not to grandstand. Unlike others on here, I don't see that as an act of treason. We decide whether the door opens. It's all in our hands.
They all leave without a communique. It's not us walking out. They all walk out. Not agreeing to reparations is not grandstanding. It's resisting blackmail and I'm sure would have the support of the vast majority in the UK. No doubt there will be a poll soon.
As much as you may wish it otherwise, the UK government has not agreed to reparations.
It has agreed the following:
"Heads, noting calls for discussions on reparatory justice with regard to the trans-Atlantic trade in enslaved Africans and chattel enslavement and recognising the importance of this matter to member states of the Commonwealth, the majority of which share common historical experiences in relation to this abhorrent trade, agreed that the time has come for a meaningful, truthful and respectful conversation towards forging a common future based on equity. Heads further agreed to continue playing an active role in bringing about such inclusive conversations addressing these harms."
So Starmer has agreed to a meaningful conversation on reparations, because that's what it's about. What else?
Perhaps it is a cynical kicking of the discussion into the long grass out of politeness.
I would simply say No. People alive now had nothing to do with slavery on either side. It's a scam.
Yep, to me that looks like a kick into the very long grass. It's very clearly not the UK agreeing to pay reparations.
I think Starmer's strategy was to find a way of saying no without aggravating the Caribbean nations so much they end up in China's sphere of influence. "A conversation towards forging a common future based on equity" can mean absolutely anything.
I just want to point out that when the Chagos Surrender happened and I went ape-shit on here, there was a lot of scoffing and “oh who cares it’s a tiny atoll you’ve never heard of before”
I responded that
1. I had definitely heard of it
2. The surrender was totally unnecessary and a strategic error of enormous proportions
And
3. One of the many reasons it was such a strategic error was that it would encourage all our enemies to take a run at us, perceiving us as weak and spineless with a stupid cowardly leader willing to yield to anything
Et voila
Indeed, there's no way that reparations or anything as stupid as that would be on the agenda had we not just paid billions to Mauritius to take the Chagos Islands off our hands. The Carribbean sense weakness and Starmer appointing reparations supporters like Lammy such high roles is another reason they know they can go for it and win. Starmer is a cuck.
Starmer should just have said “nah. Fuck off, I’m not signing that, it commits us to reparations”
But of course he’s incapable of showing backbone because he doesn’t have one, and deep down he agrees that Britain is evil and should pay
And that's the difference between him and Blair. Blair would have just laughed the whole discussion off and told the commonwealth nations to get back in their box because he fundamentally loved this country. Starmer very clearly doesn't, he sees us as part of the evil colonialist axis as so many lefties were indoctrinated to believe when they went to university by Marxist professors.
Could anyone imagine Margaret Thatcher, or even John Major signing it!
I don’t believe he’ll ever commit the UK to paying billions.
What he will do is offer some abject, and completely insincere, apology for slavery, before agreeing to pay symbolic reparations to governments who’ll stick the money in their offshore accounts.
That will set a precedent for anyone with a grudge against the UK to come calling.
One can imagine Cameron taking a similar line if he were PM now. Times have changed since the Thatcher era.
Its a further forty years since the colonial era.
A further forty years from when the former colonies becoming responsible for their own outcomes.
Yes but general awareness (here) of the scope and legacy of slavery was far less then than now.
Such as its clear now that the current inhabitants of the former British West Indies are among the great beneficiaries of the legacy of slavery.
Barbados and Bahamas are better places than Benin and Burkina Faso.
West Africa was probably the region most damaged by slavery. Its working age population, and that of the Central African hinterland, was emptied out many times over. By European traders to the West and Arab traders to the East.
You forgot the African traders in the middle.
Yes, the slave trade and the industrial capitalism of Great Britain shared the same origins for their wealth. This is the extraction and alienation of labour from the value that it produced, with the rich accumulating the products of that labour. Certainly the African middlemen benefitted, as did British ship owners, insurers, financiers and factory owners making chains in the Black Country. More benefit came to Britsh merchants due to to the terms of trade, and more harm to the African slaves than the coal-miners of Wigan.
It would be more just to see economic reparations based on class than race, but when there is even the mildest hint of that in next week's budget the PB Blimps go apoplectic.
Industrialisation has floated almost every boat, over 200 years.
The pre-industrial world was an even more extractive, profit-seeking, and cruel, place than the world of today.
Yes, there is nothing new to class war.
In fact, it’s probably just a part of the human condition. States came into existence to extract surpluses, and to wage war.
I have some seriously disappointing news for the readers of PB. None of us are getting out of here alive. We are all going to die of something. So, hypothetically, if you use exercise and cut out alcohol you will avoid certain conditions and illnesses. But you are still going to die. And, even worse, you increase the risk of losing your marbles before you do which is a truly terrible way to go.
Claiming that we can avoid health costs by better health is a chimera. Individuals may live healthier longer and good luck to them but it simply is not the answer to the exorbitant cost of health care. It simply moves the costs from 1 pile to another. And on that cheerful note I think I am going for a drink.
David , this country is full of tossers who want you to be miserable, enjoy your drink.
Torture in the Mau Mau Uprising was against British law and cultural norms. It was deservedly a case for compensation.
Though I note no compensation has been provided by the Mau Mau to Britain for its various atrocities.
The vast majority of their victims were Kenyans, which is why the Kenyans banned the organisation for forty years after independence.
I'm not really disagreeing with either of you, but want to note that crimes by Mau Mau are a different question from abuse inflicted on Mau Mau prisoners by British Officials. Buggering, castrating and/or torturing a prisoner under your control is abuse, regardless of whatever is happening in the country outside your prison.
I can see no difference from prisoners in Ukraine who have been captured, and are castrated (we had a video of one case early in the war) or murdered. If said prisoners have committed crimes themselves, then that is a separate matter for a separate trial.
"These crimes were committed by British colonial officials and have gone unrecognised and unpunished for decades. They included castration, rape and repeated violence of the worst kind. Although they occurred many years ago, the physical and mental scars remain. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/06/uk-compensate-kenya-mau-mau-torture
And, I would agree. All these things were against the law (as Enoch Powell pointed out in 1958). And, there were still people alive in 2013 who had suffered those abuses.
That’s very different to compensating people for wrongs done by people long dead to people long dead.
It’s obvious from the reporting that the UK suffered a diplomatic defeat at the Commonwealth.
Reparations were not even on the agenda, so the UK has been “hijacked”. And despite Starmer’s pleading, it is not obvious at all the money is not to be discussed.
Starmer said none of the discussions at the summit had concerned money.
“Well, no figure,” Frederick Mitchell, the foreign minister of the Bahamas told BBC Radio’s Today programme on Saturday. “We’ll see what happens going forward.”
He said he hoped a report on the issue would follow, which nations would discuss in the future. Mitchell also mentioned the UK government’s decision in 2013 to recognise the torture of Kenyans by British colonial forces during the Mau Mau uprising, which resulted in a £20m payout. “I have no doubt …. that the arc of history always goes in the right direction,” he said.
The Commonwealth no longer does our bidding, and why should it? After all KC3 is Head of State for a number of the countries pursuing reparations too. Sure we could have thrown our toys out of the pram and refused to sign the declaration, but that pretty much would bang in the final nail in its coffin.
We cannot praise the democratic institutions and rule of law that we bequeathed to the Commonwealth, then refuse to respond to those governments. Either we left them something valid, or we did not.
I don’t think the Commonwealth should do the UK’s bidding. That would be bizarre.
I simply note the UK’s diplomatic defeat on this issue.
The last government created a precedent, it seems:
"Mitchell also mentioned the UK government’s decision in 2013 to recognise the torture of Kenyans by British colonial forces during the Mau Mau uprising, which resulted in a £20m payout."
When you are in a minority you are not going to get your way. I guess the issue is whether you then walk out or just play along knowing you cannot be forced to do anything you do not want to do.
You don't walk out. You just say "No. You must be joking!" and sit there. You certainly don't sign a declaration that opens the door. You refuse to sign. Simple.
That's pretty much the same as walking out. Basically, you leave without a communique. I suspect that is what a lot of previous UK governments would have done. This one chose not to grandstand. Unlike others on here, I don't see that as an act of treason. We decide whether the door opens. It's all in our hands.
They all leave without a communique. It's not us walking out. They all walk out. Not agreeing to reparations is not grandstanding. It's resisting blackmail and I'm sure would have the support of the vast majority in the UK. No doubt there will be a poll soon.
As much as you may wish it otherwise, the UK government has not agreed to reparations.
It has agreed the following:
"Heads, noting calls for discussions on reparatory justice with regard to the trans-Atlantic trade in enslaved Africans and chattel enslavement and recognising the importance of this matter to member states of the Commonwealth, the majority of which share common historical experiences in relation to this abhorrent trade, agreed that the time has come for a meaningful, truthful and respectful conversation towards forging a common future based on equity. Heads further agreed to continue playing an active role in bringing about such inclusive conversations addressing these harms."
So Starmer has agreed to a meaningful conversation on reparations, because that's what it's about. What else?
Perhaps it is a cynical kicking of the discussion into the long grass out of politeness.
I would simply say No. People alive now had nothing to do with slavery on either side. It's a scam.
Yep, to me that looks like a kick into the very long grass. It's very clearly not the UK agreeing to pay reparations.
I think Starmer's strategy was to find a way of saying no without aggravating the Caribbean nations so much they end up in China's sphere of influence. "A conversation towards forging a common future based on equity" can mean absolutely anything.
It’s obvious from the reporting that the UK suffered a diplomatic defeat at the Commonwealth.
Reparations were not even on the agenda, so the UK has been “hijacked”. And despite Starmer’s pleading, it is not obvious at all the money is not to be discussed.
Starmer said none of the discussions at the summit had concerned money.
“Well, no figure,” Frederick Mitchell, the foreign minister of the Bahamas told BBC Radio’s Today programme on Saturday. “We’ll see what happens going forward.”
He said he hoped a report on the issue would follow, which nations would discuss in the future. Mitchell also mentioned the UK government’s decision in 2013 to recognise the torture of Kenyans by British colonial forces during the Mau Mau uprising, which resulted in a £20m payout. “I have no doubt …. that the arc of history always goes in the right direction,” he said.
The Commonwealth no longer does our bidding, and why should it? After all KC3 is Head of State for a number of the countries pursuing reparations too. Sure we could have thrown our toys out of the pram and refused to sign the declaration, but that pretty much would bang in the final nail in its coffin.
We cannot praise the democratic institutions and rule of law that we bequeathed to the Commonwealth, then refuse to respond to those governments. Either we left them something valid, or we did not.
I don’t think the Commonwealth should do the UK’s bidding. That would be bizarre.
I simply note the UK’s diplomatic defeat on this issue.
The last government created a precedent, it seems:
"Mitchell also mentioned the UK government’s decision in 2013 to recognise the torture of Kenyans by British colonial forces during the Mau Mau uprising, which resulted in a £20m payout."
When you are in a minority you are not going to get your way. I guess the issue is whether you then walk out or just play along knowing you cannot be forced to do anything you do not want to do.
You don't walk out. You just say "No. You must be joking!" and sit there. You certainly don't sign a declaration that opens the door. You refuse to sign. Simple.
That's pretty much the same as walking out. Basically, you leave without a communique. I suspect that is what a lot of previous UK governments would have done. This one chose not to grandstand. Unlike others on here, I don't see that as an act of treason. We decide whether the door opens. It's all in our hands.
They all leave without a communique. It's not us walking out. They all walk out. Not agreeing to reparations is not grandstanding. It's resisting blackmail and I'm sure would have the support of the vast majority in the UK. No doubt there will be a poll soon.
As much as you may wish it otherwise, the UK government has not agreed to reparations.
It has agreed the following:
"Heads, noting calls for discussions on reparatory justice with regard to the trans-Atlantic trade in enslaved Africans and chattel enslavement and recognising the importance of this matter to member states of the Commonwealth, the majority of which share common historical experiences in relation to this abhorrent trade, agreed that the time has come for a meaningful, truthful and respectful conversation towards forging a common future based on equity. Heads further agreed to continue playing an active role in bringing about such inclusive conversations addressing these harms."
So Starmer has agreed to a meaningful conversation on reparations, because that's what it's about. What else?
Perhaps it is a cynical kicking of the discussion into the long grass out of politeness.
I would simply say No. People alive now had nothing to do with slavery on either side. It's a scam.
Yep, to me that looks like a kick into the very long grass. It's very clearly not the UK agreeing to pay reparations.
I think Starmer's strategy was to find a way of saying no without aggravating the Caribbean nations so much they end up in China's sphere of influence. "A conversation towards forging a common future based on equity" can mean absolutely anything.
It’s obvious from the reporting that the UK suffered a diplomatic defeat at the Commonwealth.
Reparations were not even on the agenda, so the UK has been “hijacked”. And despite Starmer’s pleading, it is not obvious at all the money is not to be discussed.
Starmer said none of the discussions at the summit had concerned money.
“Well, no figure,” Frederick Mitchell, the foreign minister of the Bahamas told BBC Radio’s Today programme on Saturday. “We’ll see what happens going forward.”
He said he hoped a report on the issue would follow, which nations would discuss in the future. Mitchell also mentioned the UK government’s decision in 2013 to recognise the torture of Kenyans by British colonial forces during the Mau Mau uprising, which resulted in a £20m payout. “I have no doubt …. that the arc of history always goes in the right direction,” he said.
The Commonwealth no longer does our bidding, and why should it? After all KC3 is Head of State for a number of the countries pursuing reparations too. Sure we could have thrown our toys out of the pram and refused to sign the declaration, but that pretty much would bang in the final nail in its coffin.
We cannot praise the democratic institutions and rule of law that we bequeathed to the Commonwealth, then refuse to respond to those governments. Either we left them something valid, or we did not.
I don’t think the Commonwealth should do the UK’s bidding. That would be bizarre.
I simply note the UK’s diplomatic defeat on this issue.
The last government created a precedent, it seems:
"Mitchell also mentioned the UK government’s decision in 2013 to recognise the torture of Kenyans by British colonial forces during the Mau Mau uprising, which resulted in a £20m payout."
When you are in a minority you are not going to get your way. I guess the issue is whether you then walk out or just play along knowing you cannot be forced to do anything you do not want to do.
You don't walk out. You just say "No. You must be joking!" and sit there. You certainly don't sign a declaration that opens the door. You refuse to sign. Simple.
That's pretty much the same as walking out. Basically, you leave without a communique. I suspect that is what a lot of previous UK governments would have done. This one chose not to grandstand. Unlike others on here, I don't see that as an act of treason. We decide whether the door opens. It's all in our hands.
They all leave without a communique. It's not us walking out. They all walk out. Not agreeing to reparations is not grandstanding. It's resisting blackmail and I'm sure would have the support of the vast majority in the UK. No doubt there will be a poll soon.
As much as you may wish it otherwise, the UK government has not agreed to reparations.
It has agreed the following:
"Heads, noting calls for discussions on reparatory justice with regard to the trans-Atlantic trade in enslaved Africans and chattel enslavement and recognising the importance of this matter to member states of the Commonwealth, the majority of which share common historical experiences in relation to this abhorrent trade, agreed that the time has come for a meaningful, truthful and respectful conversation towards forging a common future based on equity. Heads further agreed to continue playing an active role in bringing about such inclusive conversations addressing these harms."
So Starmer has agreed to a meaningful conversation on reparations, because that's what it's about. What else?
Perhaps it is a cynical kicking of the discussion into the long grass out of politeness.
I would simply say No. People alive now had nothing to do with slavery on either side. It's a scam.
Yep, to me that looks like a kick into the very long grass. It's very clearly not the UK agreeing to pay reparations.
I think Starmer's strategy was to find a way of saying no without aggravating the Caribbean nations so much they end up in China's sphere of influence. "A conversation towards forging a common future based on equity" can mean absolutely anything.
It’s obvious from the reporting that the UK suffered a diplomatic defeat at the Commonwealth.
Reparations were not even on the agenda, so the UK has been “hijacked”. And despite Starmer’s pleading, it is not obvious at all the money is not to be discussed.
Starmer said none of the discussions at the summit had concerned money.
“Well, no figure,” Frederick Mitchell, the foreign minister of the Bahamas told BBC Radio’s Today programme on Saturday. “We’ll see what happens going forward.”
He said he hoped a report on the issue would follow, which nations would discuss in the future. Mitchell also mentioned the UK government’s decision in 2013 to recognise the torture of Kenyans by British colonial forces during the Mau Mau uprising, which resulted in a £20m payout. “I have no doubt …. that the arc of history always goes in the right direction,” he said.
The Commonwealth no longer does our bidding, and why should it? After all KC3 is Head of State for a number of the countries pursuing reparations too. Sure we could have thrown our toys out of the pram and refused to sign the declaration, but that pretty much would bang in the final nail in its coffin.
We cannot praise the democratic institutions and rule of law that we bequeathed to the Commonwealth, then refuse to respond to those governments. Either we left them something valid, or we did not.
I don’t think the Commonwealth should do the UK’s bidding. That would be bizarre.
I simply note the UK’s diplomatic defeat on this issue.
The last government created a precedent, it seems:
"Mitchell also mentioned the UK government’s decision in 2013 to recognise the torture of Kenyans by British colonial forces during the Mau Mau uprising, which resulted in a £20m payout."
When you are in a minority you are not going to get your way. I guess the issue is whether you then walk out or just play along knowing you cannot be forced to do anything you do not want to do.
You don't walk out. You just say "No. You must be joking!" and sit there. You certainly don't sign a declaration that opens the door. You refuse to sign. Simple.
That's pretty much the same as walking out. Basically, you leave without a communique. I suspect that is what a lot of previous UK governments would have done. This one chose not to grandstand. Unlike others on here, I don't see that as an act of treason. We decide whether the door opens. It's all in our hands.
They all leave without a communique. It's not us walking out. They all walk out. Not agreeing to reparations is not grandstanding. It's resisting blackmail and I'm sure would have the support of the vast majority in the UK. No doubt there will be a poll soon.
As much as you may wish it otherwise, the UK government has not agreed to reparations.
It has agreed the following:
"Heads, noting calls for discussions on reparatory justice with regard to the trans-Atlantic trade in enslaved Africans and chattel enslavement and recognising the importance of this matter to member states of the Commonwealth, the majority of which share common historical experiences in relation to this abhorrent trade, agreed that the time has come for a meaningful, truthful and respectful conversation towards forging a common future based on equity. Heads further agreed to continue playing an active role in bringing about such inclusive conversations addressing these harms."
So Starmer has agreed to a meaningful conversation on reparations, because that's what it's about. What else?
Perhaps it is a cynical kicking of the discussion into the long grass out of politeness.
I would simply say No. People alive now had nothing to do with slavery on either side. It's a scam.
Yep, to me that looks like a kick into the very long grass. It's very clearly not the UK agreeing to pay reparations.
I think Starmer's strategy was to find a way of saying no without aggravating the Caribbean nations so much they end up in China's sphere of influence. "A conversation towards forging a common future based on equity" can mean absolutely anything.
I lived in the Caribbean for three years. My abiding sense was that not only did they know a lot more about their own history than we are ever taught, but they often seemed to know a lot more about our history than we do. That impression is not diminished by reading the discussion on here!
Time they stpped whinging and got over what happened hundreds of years ago. They have made a right clusterfcuk of it since they were put in charge. Still trying to grift rather than getting out and making something of themselves. How many centuries can they make excuses for.
I lived in the Caribbean for three years. My abiding sense was that not only did they know a lot more about their own history than we are ever taught, but they often seemed to know a lot more about our history than we do. That impression is not diminished by reading the discussion on here!
Time they stpped whinging and got over what happened hundreds of years ago. They have made a right clusterfcuk of it since they were put in charge. Still trying to grift rather than getting out and making something of themselves. How many centuries can they make excuses for.
I just want to point out that when the Chagos Surrender happened and I went ape-shit on here, there was a lot of scoffing and “oh who cares it’s a tiny atoll you’ve never heard of before”
I responded that
1. I had definitely heard of it
2. The surrender was totally unnecessary and a strategic error of enormous proportions
And
3. One of the many reasons it was such a strategic error was that it would encourage all our enemies to take a run at us, perceiving us as weak and spineless with a stupid cowardly leader willing to yield to anything
Et voila
Indeed, there's no way that reparations or anything as stupid as that would be on the agenda had we not just paid billions to Mauritius to take the Chagos Islands off our hands. The Carribbean sense weakness and Starmer appointing reparations supporters like Lammy such high roles is another reason they know they can go for it and win. Starmer is a cuck.
Starmer should just have said “nah. Fuck off, I’m not signing that, it commits us to reparations”
But of course he’s incapable of showing backbone because he doesn’t have one, and deep down he agrees that Britain is evil and should pay
And that's the difference between him and Blair. Blair would have just laughed the whole discussion off and told the commonwealth nations to get back in their box because he fundamentally loved this country. Starmer very clearly doesn't, he sees us as part of the evil colonialist axis as so many lefties were indoctrinated to believe when they went to university by Marxist professors.
Could anyone imagine Margaret Thatcher, or even John Major signing it!
I don’t believe he’ll ever commit the UK to paying billions.
What he will do is offer some abject, and completely insincere, apology for slavery, before agreeing to pay symbolic reparations to governments who’ll stick the money in their offshore accounts.
That will set a precedent for anyone with a grudge against the UK to come calling.
One can imagine Cameron taking a similar line if he were PM now. Times have changed since the Thatcher era.
Osborne, yes. Cameron, I think not.
Impossible to imagine a British PM now suggesting, as Cameron did, that he was proud of the Empire. But that was only 2013.
The last 10 years have really been a roller coaster.
So did Blair.
FWIW, I still think the Empire was on balance a good thing - and I don't even think it's on balance, but clearly a good thing.
Why do you think the Empire was a good thing?
The modern world would be unrecognisable without the Empire.
We wouldn't have free liberal democracies like the United States, Canada, New Zealand or Australia nor large multireligious and panethnic democratic states like India and South Africa. We would not have Carribean and African states endeavouring to follow that path. We would not have free international trade, we would not have been able to fight and win WW1 or WW2, we would not have the UN, Human Rights or the rule of law as an international principle. Countries like Singapore and South Korea wouldn't exist and Japan would have taken a different path.
We'd have a world of autocracy instead, with fewer rights, more suffering, more cruelty and less human development. It'd be China, Iran and Russia writ-large. Dictators and Theocracies where might made right.
The handwringing we have now is, I think, in direct relationship to our waning power and influence and is in some sense a response to it: it's to try and keep us at the centre of ongoing geopolitical conversations - ones that our rivals absolutely don't respect and, in fact, use to hold us in contempt.
I don't agree with all these points, but I do think we have a bizarre idea that handwringing gains us something either in terms of our national progression or in geopolitical terms, and I really don't think that is the case.
And I do think handwringing is distinct from acknowledging things, but the former is what is pushed.
If one doesn't agree one has to argue from where else democracy would have spawned and how it'd have been defended and advanced at the same time.
It's not a long list. France is probably the closest and they had a decidedly jittery and mixed record.
TBF, most Caribbean countries have done pretty well, post independence, on the back of being tax havens, and tourist centres. Haiti and Cuba are the obvious exceptions.
It’s obvious from the reporting that the UK suffered a diplomatic defeat at the Commonwealth.
Reparations were not even on the agenda, so the UK has been “hijacked”. And despite Starmer’s pleading, it is not obvious at all the money is not to be discussed.
Starmer said none of the discussions at the summit had concerned money.
“Well, no figure,” Frederick Mitchell, the foreign minister of the Bahamas told BBC Radio’s Today programme on Saturday. “We’ll see what happens going forward.”
He said he hoped a report on the issue would follow, which nations would discuss in the future. Mitchell also mentioned the UK government’s decision in 2013 to recognise the torture of Kenyans by British colonial forces during the Mau Mau uprising, which resulted in a £20m payout. “I have no doubt …. that the arc of history always goes in the right direction,” he said.
The Commonwealth no longer does our bidding, and why should it? After all KC3 is Head of State for a number of the countries pursuing reparations too. Sure we could have thrown our toys out of the pram and refused to sign the declaration, but that pretty much would bang in the final nail in its coffin.
We cannot praise the democratic institutions and rule of law that we bequeathed to the Commonwealth, then refuse to respond to those governments. Either we left them something valid, or we did not.
I don’t think the Commonwealth should do the UK’s bidding. That would be bizarre.
I simply note the UK’s diplomatic defeat on this issue.
The last government created a precedent, it seems:
"Mitchell also mentioned the UK government’s decision in 2013 to recognise the torture of Kenyans by British colonial forces during the Mau Mau uprising, which resulted in a £20m payout."
When you are in a minority you are not going to get your way. I guess the issue is whether you then walk out or just play along knowing you cannot be forced to do anything you do not want to do.
You don't walk out. You just say "No. You must be joking!" and sit there. You certainly don't sign a declaration that opens the door. You refuse to sign. Simple.
That's pretty much the same as walking out. Basically, you leave without a communique. I suspect that is what a lot of previous UK governments would have done. This one chose not to grandstand. Unlike others on here, I don't see that as an act of treason. We decide whether the door opens. It's all in our hands.
They all leave without a communique. It's not us walking out. They all walk out. Not agreeing to reparations is not grandstanding. It's resisting blackmail and I'm sure would have the support of the vast majority in the UK. No doubt there will be a poll soon.
As much as you may wish it otherwise, the UK government has not agreed to reparations.
It has agreed the following:
"Heads, noting calls for discussions on reparatory justice with regard to the trans-Atlantic trade in enslaved Africans and chattel enslavement and recognising the importance of this matter to member states of the Commonwealth, the majority of which share common historical experiences in relation to this abhorrent trade, agreed that the time has come for a meaningful, truthful and respectful conversation towards forging a common future based on equity. Heads further agreed to continue playing an active role in bringing about such inclusive conversations addressing these harms."
So Starmer has agreed to a meaningful conversation on reparations, because that's what it's about. What else?
Perhaps it is a cynical kicking of the discussion into the long grass out of politeness.
I would simply say No. People alive now had nothing to do with slavery on either side. It's a scam.
Yep, to me that looks like a kick into the very long grass. It's very clearly not the UK agreeing to pay reparations.
I think Starmer's strategy was to find a way of saying no without aggravating the Caribbean nations so much they end up in China's sphere of influence. "A conversation towards forging a common future based on equity" can mean absolutely anything.
In that case, it should have been to ditch all talk of reparations, forever, in exchange for trade and security alliances with Britain and more investment and development deals.
It’s obvious from the reporting that the UK suffered a diplomatic defeat at the Commonwealth.
Reparations were not even on the agenda, so the UK has been “hijacked”. And despite Starmer’s pleading, it is not obvious at all the money is not to be discussed.
Starmer said none of the discussions at the summit had concerned money.
“Well, no figure,” Frederick Mitchell, the foreign minister of the Bahamas told BBC Radio’s Today programme on Saturday. “We’ll see what happens going forward.”
He said he hoped a report on the issue would follow, which nations would discuss in the future. Mitchell also mentioned the UK government’s decision in 2013 to recognise the torture of Kenyans by British colonial forces during the Mau Mau uprising, which resulted in a £20m payout. “I have no doubt …. that the arc of history always goes in the right direction,” he said.
The Commonwealth no longer does our bidding, and why should it? After all KC3 is Head of State for a number of the countries pursuing reparations too. Sure we could have thrown our toys out of the pram and refused to sign the declaration, but that pretty much would bang in the final nail in its coffin.
We cannot praise the democratic institutions and rule of law that we bequeathed to the Commonwealth, then refuse to respond to those governments. Either we left them something valid, or we did not.
I don’t think the Commonwealth should do the UK’s bidding. That would be bizarre.
I simply note the UK’s diplomatic defeat on this issue.
The last government created a precedent, it seems:
"Mitchell also mentioned the UK government’s decision in 2013 to recognise the torture of Kenyans by British colonial forces during the Mau Mau uprising, which resulted in a £20m payout."
When you are in a minority you are not going to get your way. I guess the issue is whether you then walk out or just play along knowing you cannot be forced to do anything you do not want to do.
You don't walk out. You just say "No. You must be joking!" and sit there. You certainly don't sign a declaration that opens the door. You refuse to sign. Simple.
That's pretty much the same as walking out. Basically, you leave without a communique. I suspect that is what a lot of previous UK governments would have done. This one chose not to grandstand. Unlike others on here, I don't see that as an act of treason. We decide whether the door opens. It's all in our hands.
They all leave without a communique. It's not us walking out. They all walk out. Not agreeing to reparations is not grandstanding. It's resisting blackmail and I'm sure would have the support of the vast majority in the UK. No doubt there will be a poll soon.
As much as you may wish it otherwise, the UK government has not agreed to reparations.
It has agreed the following:
"Heads, noting calls for discussions on reparatory justice with regard to the trans-Atlantic trade in enslaved Africans and chattel enslavement and recognising the importance of this matter to member states of the Commonwealth, the majority of which share common historical experiences in relation to this abhorrent trade, agreed that the time has come for a meaningful, truthful and respectful conversation towards forging a common future based on equity. Heads further agreed to continue playing an active role in bringing about such inclusive conversations addressing these harms."
So Starmer has agreed to a meaningful conversation on reparations, because that's what it's about. What else?
Perhaps it is a cynical kicking of the discussion into the long grass out of politeness.
I would simply say No. People alive now had nothing to do with slavery on either side. It's a scam.
Yep, to me that looks like a kick into the very long grass. It's very clearly not the UK agreeing to pay reparations.
Starmer getting a load of abuse for this but I am pretty sure he will be doing what the FO says is policy on this one.
I have some seriously disappointing news for the readers of PB. None of us are getting out of here alive. We are all going to die of something. So, hypothetically, if you use exercise and cut out alcohol you will avoid certain conditions and illnesses. But you are still going to die. And, even worse, you increase the risk of losing your marbles before you do which is a truly terrible way to go.
Claiming that we can avoid health costs by better health is a chimera. Individuals may live healthier longer and good luck to them but it simply is not the answer to the exorbitant cost of health care. It simply moves the costs from 1 pile to another. And on that cheerful note I think I am going for a drink.
David , this country is full of tossers who want you to be miserable, enjoy your drink.
Its having a happy medium. I only drink on the weekends so appreciate it more when i do.
I have some seriously disappointing news for the readers of PB. None of us are getting out of here alive. We are all going to die of something. So, hypothetically, if you use exercise and cut out alcohol you will avoid certain conditions and illnesses. But you are still going to die. And, even worse, you increase the risk of losing your marbles before you do which is a truly terrible way to go.
Claiming that we can avoid health costs by better health is a chimera. Individuals may live healthier longer and good luck to them but it simply is not the answer to the exorbitant cost of health care. It simply moves the costs from 1 pile to another. And on that cheerful note I think I am going for a drink.
David , this country is full of tossers who want you to be miserable, enjoy your drink.
Its having a happy medium. I only drink on the weekends so appreciate it more when i do.
I see and hear it a lot these days but when did "on the weekend" become a thing? Surely it's "at the weekend". On is for a specific day, isn't it?
I just want to point out that when the Chagos Surrender happened and I went ape-shit on here, there was a lot of scoffing and “oh who cares it’s a tiny atoll you’ve never heard of before”
I responded that
1. I had definitely heard of it
2. The surrender was totally unnecessary and a strategic error of enormous proportions
And
3. One of the many reasons it was such a strategic error was that it would encourage all our enemies to take a run at us, perceiving us as weak and spineless with a stupid cowardly leader willing to yield to anything
Et voila
Indeed, there's no way that reparations or anything as stupid as that would be on the agenda had we not just paid billions to Mauritius to take the Chagos Islands off our hands. The Carribbean sense weakness and Starmer appointing reparations supporters like Lammy such high roles is another reason they know they can go for it and win. Starmer is a cuck.
Starmer should just have said “nah. Fuck off, I’m not signing that, it commits us to reparations”
But of course he’s incapable of showing backbone because he doesn’t have one, and deep down he agrees that Britain is evil and should pay
And that's the difference between him and Blair. Blair would have just laughed the whole discussion off and told the commonwealth nations to get back in their box because he fundamentally loved this country. Starmer very clearly doesn't, he sees us as part of the evil colonialist axis as so many lefties were indoctrinated to believe when they went to university by Marxist professors.
Could anyone imagine Margaret Thatcher, or even John Major signing it!
I don’t believe he’ll ever commit the UK to paying billions.
What he will do is offer some abject, and completely insincere, apology for slavery, before agreeing to pay symbolic reparations to governments who’ll stick the money in their offshore accounts.
That will set a precedent for anyone with a grudge against the UK to come calling.
One can imagine Cameron taking a similar line if he were PM now. Times have changed since the Thatcher era.
Osborne, yes. Cameron, I think not.
Impossible to imagine a British PM now suggesting, as Cameron did, that he was proud of the Empire. But that was only 2013.
The last 10 years have really been a roller coaster.
So did Blair.
FWIW, I still think the Empire was on balance a good thing - and I don't even think it's on balance, but clearly a good thing.
Why do you think the Empire was a good thing?
The modern world would be unrecognisable without the Empire.
We wouldn't have free liberal democracies like the United States, Canada, New Zealand or Australia nor large multireligious and panethnic democratic states like India and South Africa. We would not have Carribean and African states endeavouring to follow that path. We would not have free international trade, we would not have been able to fight and win WW1 or WW2, we would not have the UN, Human Rights or the rule of law as an international principle. Countries like Singapore and South Korea wouldn't exist and Japan would have taken a different path.
We'd have a world of autocracy instead, with fewer rights, more suffering, more cruelty and less human development. It'd be China, Iran and Russia writ-large. Dictators and Theocracies where might made right.
The handwringing we have now is, I think, in direct relationship to our waning power and influence and is in some sense a response to it: it's to try and keep us at the centre of ongoing geopolitical conversations - ones that our rivals absolutely don't respect and, in fact, use to hold us in contempt.
I don't agree with all these points, but I do think we have a bizarre idea that handwringing gains us something either in terms of our national progression or in geopolitical terms, and I really don't think that is the case.
And I do think handwringing is distinct from acknowledging things, but the former is what is pushed.
If one doesn't agree one has to argue from where else democracy would have spawned and how it'd have been defended and advanced at the same time.
It's not a long list. France is probably the closest and they had a decidedly jittery and mixed record.
I agree. But you also need to step back and consider why democracy spawned in UK, France and elsewhere. It's not easy to answer but in general I'd argue against British or European exceptionalism and in favour of the idea that democracy flourishes when nations create the conditions for it to flourish.
By contrast, democracy was often imposed on colonies without there being the conditions for it to flourish and hasn't always 'stuck' post-empire as a result.
I just want to point out that when the Chagos Surrender happened and I went ape-shit on here, there was a lot of scoffing and “oh who cares it’s a tiny atoll you’ve never heard of before”
I responded that
1. I had definitely heard of it
2. The surrender was totally unnecessary and a strategic error of enormous proportions
And
3. One of the many reasons it was such a strategic error was that it would encourage all our enemies to take a run at us, perceiving us as weak and spineless with a stupid cowardly leader willing to yield to anything
Et voila
Indeed, there's no way that reparations or anything as stupid as that would be on the agenda had we not just paid billions to Mauritius to take the Chagos Islands off our hands. The Carribbean sense weakness and Starmer appointing reparations supporters like Lammy such high roles is another reason they know they can go for it and win. Starmer is a cuck.
Starmer should just have said “nah. Fuck off, I’m not signing that, it commits us to reparations”
But of course he’s incapable of showing backbone because he doesn’t have one, and deep down he agrees that Britain is evil and should pay
And that's the difference between him and Blair. Blair would have just laughed the whole discussion off and told the commonwealth nations to get back in their box because he fundamentally loved this country. Starmer very clearly doesn't, he sees us as part of the evil colonialist axis as so many lefties were indoctrinated to believe when they went to university by Marxist professors.
Could anyone imagine Margaret Thatcher, or even John Major signing it!
I don’t believe he’ll ever commit the UK to paying billions.
What he will do is offer some abject, and completely insincere, apology for slavery, before agreeing to pay symbolic reparations to governments who’ll stick the money in their offshore accounts.
That will set a precedent for anyone with a grudge against the UK to come calling.
One can imagine Cameron taking a similar line if he were PM now. Times have changed since the Thatcher era.
Osborne, yes. Cameron, I think not.
Impossible to imagine a British PM now suggesting, as Cameron did, that he was proud of the Empire. But that was only 2013.
The last 10 years have really been a roller coaster.
I think it's strange that as the world moves back towards the pre-1945 view that the strong do as they will, the weak as they must, our own leaders are in complete denial about it.
That’s the point I made yesterday about our increasingly Hobbesian world.
I don’t wish for Britain to surrender its long-standing support for international institutions, but there seems to be gross lack of realpolitik and, at the end of the day, simple self-belief.
The Empire to me a key battle-line, because it is an essential part of British experience 1600-1960. It’s impossible to imagine the UK without it.
And therefore a total repudiation and condemnation of it really calls into question whether the UK itself has any legitimacy.
Exactly, which is no doubt the agenda some secretly harbour.
Destroying the sense of the nation state makes it easier to be subsumed into a United States of Europe.
Absolute lunatic comment.
The end goal of the repudiation that I talk about is the end of Western order itself, to be replaced presumably by some breed of indigenous, socialist republics.
To the extent this aids any realistic geopolitical goal, it is China’s.
I think you're right about the overall view, I'm giving the Starmer view on why this is desirable. His destruction of the UK as a nation state of which we can be proud of is to ensure when we get asked again we will definitely say yes and it paves the way for European nations to be replaced by a United States of Europe.
Do you think that English people's pride in being English has to be destroyed is a necessary precondition for the existence of the United Kingdom?
One of the reasons I have always been enthusiastic about a United Europe is that I see very naturally in the example of the UK how people can have more than a single identity, and can be in a state called Europe at the same time as also being British, English, Welsh, French, etc.
Britain is a model of confident amalgamated nationhood that Europe could follow. Confident enough in the future of the whole not to feel that the identities, flags and sports teams of the constituent parts had to be erased. All too often the Right betray their lack of confidence in Britain in their attacks on British participation in European cooperation, and on devolved government within the UK.
It’s obvious from the reporting that the UK suffered a diplomatic defeat at the Commonwealth.
Reparations were not even on the agenda, so the UK has been “hijacked”. And despite Starmer’s pleading, it is not obvious at all the money is not to be discussed.
Starmer said none of the discussions at the summit had concerned money.
“Well, no figure,” Frederick Mitchell, the foreign minister of the Bahamas told BBC Radio’s Today programme on Saturday. “We’ll see what happens going forward.”
He said he hoped a report on the issue would follow, which nations would discuss in the future. Mitchell also mentioned the UK government’s decision in 2013 to recognise the torture of Kenyans by British colonial forces during the Mau Mau uprising, which resulted in a £20m payout. “I have no doubt …. that the arc of history always goes in the right direction,” he said.
The Commonwealth no longer does our bidding, and why should it? After all KC3 is Head of State for a number of the countries pursuing reparations too. Sure we could have thrown our toys out of the pram and refused to sign the declaration, but that pretty much would bang in the final nail in its coffin.
We cannot praise the democratic institutions and rule of law that we bequeathed to the Commonwealth, then refuse to respond to those governments. Either we left them something valid, or we did not.
I don’t think the Commonwealth should do the UK’s bidding. That would be bizarre.
I simply note the UK’s diplomatic defeat on this issue.
The last government created a precedent, it seems:
"Mitchell also mentioned the UK government’s decision in 2013 to recognise the torture of Kenyans by British colonial forces during the Mau Mau uprising, which resulted in a £20m payout."
When you are in a minority you are not going to get your way. I guess the issue is whether you then walk out or just play along knowing you cannot be forced to do anything you do not want to do.
You don't walk out. You just say "No. You must be joking!" and sit there. You certainly don't sign a declaration that opens the door. You refuse to sign. Simple.
That's pretty much the same as walking out. Basically, you leave without a communique. I suspect that is what a lot of previous UK governments would have done. This one chose not to grandstand. Unlike others on here, I don't see that as an act of treason. We decide whether the door opens. It's all in our hands.
They all leave without a communique. It's not us walking out. They all walk out. Not agreeing to reparations is not grandstanding. It's resisting blackmail and I'm sure would have the support of the vast majority in the UK. No doubt there will be a poll soon.
As much as you may wish it otherwise, the UK government has not agreed to reparations.
It has agreed the following:
"Heads, noting calls for discussions on reparatory justice with regard to the trans-Atlantic trade in enslaved Africans and chattel enslavement and recognising the importance of this matter to member states of the Commonwealth, the majority of which share common historical experiences in relation to this abhorrent trade, agreed that the time has come for a meaningful, truthful and respectful conversation towards forging a common future based on equity. Heads further agreed to continue playing an active role in bringing about such inclusive conversations addressing these harms."
So Starmer has agreed to a meaningful conversation on reparations, because that's what it's about. What else?
Perhaps it is a cynical kicking of the discussion into the long grass out of politeness.
I would simply say No. People alive now had nothing to do with slavery on either side. It's a scam.
Yep, to me that looks like a kick into the very long grass. It's very clearly not the UK agreeing to pay reparations.
I think Starmer's strategy was to find a way of saying no without aggravating the Caribbean nations so much they end up in China's sphere of influence. "A conversation towards forging a common future based on equity" can mean absolutely anything.
Yep, it's big, thick, sticky fudge. If you can get that instead of a big argument at a time when the geopolitical headwinds are massively difficult, why not?
I have some seriously disappointing news for the readers of PB. None of us are getting out of here alive. We are all going to die of something. So, hypothetically, if you use exercise and cut out alcohol you will avoid certain conditions and illnesses. But you are still going to die. And, even worse, you increase the risk of losing your marbles before you do which is a truly terrible way to go.
Claiming that we can avoid health costs by better health is a chimera. Individuals may live healthier longer and good luck to them but it simply is not the answer to the exorbitant cost of health care. It simply moves the costs from 1 pile to another. And on that cheerful note I think I am going for a drink.
David , this country is full of tossers who want you to be miserable, enjoy your drink.
Its having a happy medium. I only drink on the weekends so appreciate it more when i do.
I only drink in days with a "y" in them (or, more realistically, when the Dad taxi firm is not operating).
It’s obvious from the reporting that the UK suffered a diplomatic defeat at the Commonwealth.
Reparations were not even on the agenda, so the UK has been “hijacked”. And despite Starmer’s pleading, it is not obvious at all the money is not to be discussed.
Starmer said none of the discussions at the summit had concerned money.
“Well, no figure,” Frederick Mitchell, the foreign minister of the Bahamas told BBC Radio’s Today programme on Saturday. “We’ll see what happens going forward.”
He said he hoped a report on the issue would follow, which nations would discuss in the future. Mitchell also mentioned the UK government’s decision in 2013 to recognise the torture of Kenyans by British colonial forces during the Mau Mau uprising, which resulted in a £20m payout. “I have no doubt …. that the arc of history always goes in the right direction,” he said.
The Commonwealth no longer does our bidding, and why should it? After all KC3 is Head of State for a number of the countries pursuing reparations too. Sure we could have thrown our toys out of the pram and refused to sign the declaration, but that pretty much would bang in the final nail in its coffin.
We cannot praise the democratic institutions and rule of law that we bequeathed to the Commonwealth, then refuse to respond to those governments. Either we left them something valid, or we did not.
I don’t think the Commonwealth should do the UK’s bidding. That would be bizarre.
I simply note the UK’s diplomatic defeat on this issue.
The last government created a precedent, it seems:
"Mitchell also mentioned the UK government’s decision in 2013 to recognise the torture of Kenyans by British colonial forces during the Mau Mau uprising, which resulted in a £20m payout."
When you are in a minority you are not going to get your way. I guess the issue is whether you then walk out or just play along knowing you cannot be forced to do anything you do not want to do.
You don't walk out. You just say "No. You must be joking!" and sit there. You certainly don't sign a declaration that opens the door. You refuse to sign. Simple.
That's pretty much the same as walking out. Basically, you leave without a communique. I suspect that is what a lot of previous UK governments would have done. This one chose not to grandstand. Unlike others on here, I don't see that as an act of treason. We decide whether the door opens. It's all in our hands.
They all leave without a communique. It's not us walking out. They all walk out. Not agreeing to reparations is not grandstanding. It's resisting blackmail and I'm sure would have the support of the vast majority in the UK. No doubt there will be a poll soon.
As much as you may wish it otherwise, the UK government has not agreed to reparations.
It has agreed the following:
"Heads, noting calls for discussions on reparatory justice with regard to the trans-Atlantic trade in enslaved Africans and chattel enslavement and recognising the importance of this matter to member states of the Commonwealth, the majority of which share common historical experiences in relation to this abhorrent trade, agreed that the time has come for a meaningful, truthful and respectful conversation towards forging a common future based on equity. Heads further agreed to continue playing an active role in bringing about such inclusive conversations addressing these harms."
So Starmer has agreed to a meaningful conversation on reparations, because that's what it's about. What else?
Perhaps it is a cynical kicking of the discussion into the long grass out of politeness.
I would simply say No. People alive now had nothing to do with slavery on either side. It's a scam.
Yep, to me that looks like a kick into the very long grass. It's very clearly not the UK agreeing to pay reparations.
Starmer getting a load of abuse for this but I am pretty sure he will be doing what the FO says is policy on this one.
We have Ukraine and NATO on a knife edge as we wait for the US election. The Middle East is a tinderbox and could explode totally at any moment. The West generally is distrusted and disliked by large parts of the world. If there's no need for a row - and clearly at this stage there isn't - why have one?
🔺 NEW: Sir Keir Starmer has been forced to promise Commonwealth countries that Britain will discuss reparations for slavery next year as he failed to quash an official call for damages
As I said before, I think he's actually a traitor. He loathes this country and can't wait to destroy it.
Agreed. It can only be that.
If he’s not a traitor he is the worst politician in history who always ends up with the worst possible deal for this country. Remember he’s the guy who not only gave away the Chagos to China but AGREED A DEAL WHERE WE PAY FOR THAT
He (i.e., we) will be ripped apart by China, the EU, Spain, the Commonwealth and the USA in any trade deal or geopolitical negotiation over the next 4 years. It's going to cost us a fortune. Some of it permanently, I'm afraid.
I just hope the Tories can unpick it all when they reset and get back in office 🙏
He is a traitorous c*nt
Remember that one of the “reasons” for the Chagos Surrender was that it would “increase our influence and soft power”. Instead everyone has laughed at Starmer and Labour for being such a weak bunch of fucking cucks and now they are demanding the UK pay seven trillion quid and forcing Starmer to sign this communique
WANKERS
He's surely empowered Putin too. How long before Russian tanks are in Sevenoaks because the great big girl's blouse is too scared to use Trident?
Reading some of today’s comments, I’m worried that some on here would prefer Putin to Starmer. I’m thinking I’ve accidentally logged onto Con Home.
It's like we've turned into the cigar room in some Mayfair den in the 70s.
Chaps cussing the reds and working themselves up into a right old lather.
Do you think Harris is a good candidate.
Yes.
Did you see her performance on cnn townhall. Embarassing. Even Anderson Cooper wasnt impressed.
A beautiful day here in central Buchan, so busy busy delivering my election leaflets (7th November council by-election). A few of us out, but I spent all day at it on a mega 19km walk delivering 550 of them.
It’s obvious from the reporting that the UK suffered a diplomatic defeat at the Commonwealth.
Reparations were not even on the agenda, so the UK has been “hijacked”. And despite Starmer’s pleading, it is not obvious at all the money is not to be discussed.
Starmer said none of the discussions at the summit had concerned money.
“Well, no figure,” Frederick Mitchell, the foreign minister of the Bahamas told BBC Radio’s Today programme on Saturday. “We’ll see what happens going forward.”
He said he hoped a report on the issue would follow, which nations would discuss in the future. Mitchell also mentioned the UK government’s decision in 2013 to recognise the torture of Kenyans by British colonial forces during the Mau Mau uprising, which resulted in a £20m payout. “I have no doubt …. that the arc of history always goes in the right direction,” he said.
The Commonwealth no longer does our bidding, and why should it? After all KC3 is Head of State for a number of the countries pursuing reparations too. Sure we could have thrown our toys out of the pram and refused to sign the declaration, but that pretty much would bang in the final nail in its coffin.
We cannot praise the democratic institutions and rule of law that we bequeathed to the Commonwealth, then refuse to respond to those governments. Either we left them something valid, or we did not.
I don’t think the Commonwealth should do the UK’s bidding. That would be bizarre.
I simply note the UK’s diplomatic defeat on this issue.
The last government created a precedent, it seems:
"Mitchell also mentioned the UK government’s decision in 2013 to recognise the torture of Kenyans by British colonial forces during the Mau Mau uprising, which resulted in a £20m payout."
When you are in a minority you are not going to get your way. I guess the issue is whether you then walk out or just play along knowing you cannot be forced to do anything you do not want to do.
You don't walk out. You just say "No. You must be joking!" and sit there. You certainly don't sign a declaration that opens the door. You refuse to sign. Simple.
That's pretty much the same as walking out. Basically, you leave without a communique. I suspect that is what a lot of previous UK governments would have done. This one chose not to grandstand. Unlike others on here, I don't see that as an act of treason. We decide whether the door opens. It's all in our hands.
They all leave without a communique. It's not us walking out. They all walk out. Not agreeing to reparations is not grandstanding. It's resisting blackmail and I'm sure would have the support of the vast majority in the UK. No doubt there will be a poll soon.
As much as you may wish it otherwise, the UK government has not agreed to reparations.
It has agreed the following:
"Heads, noting calls for discussions on reparatory justice with regard to the trans-Atlantic trade in enslaved Africans and chattel enslavement and recognising the importance of this matter to member states of the Commonwealth, the majority of which share common historical experiences in relation to this abhorrent trade, agreed that the time has come for a meaningful, truthful and respectful conversation towards forging a common future based on equity. Heads further agreed to continue playing an active role in bringing about such inclusive conversations addressing these harms."
So Starmer has agreed to a meaningful conversation on reparations, because that's what it's about. What else?
Perhaps it is a cynical kicking of the discussion into the long grass out of politeness.
I would simply say No. People alive now had nothing to do with slavery on either side. It's a scam.
Yep, to me that looks like a kick into the very long grass. It's very clearly not the UK agreeing to pay reparations.
Starmer getting a load of abuse for this but I am pretty sure he will be doing what the FO says is policy on this one.
Oh fuck
That won't stop the Telegraph and GBNews, so it shouldn't stop you. This is a democracy. Carry on regardless!
I just want to point out that when the Chagos Surrender happened and I went ape-shit on here, there was a lot of scoffing and “oh who cares it’s a tiny atoll you’ve never heard of before”
I responded that
1. I had definitely heard of it
2. The surrender was totally unnecessary and a strategic error of enormous proportions
And
3. One of the many reasons it was such a strategic error was that it would encourage all our enemies to take a run at us, perceiving us as weak and spineless with a stupid cowardly leader willing to yield to anything
Et voila
Indeed, there's no way that reparations or anything as stupid as that would be on the agenda had we not just paid billions to Mauritius to take the Chagos Islands off our hands. The Carribbean sense weakness and Starmer appointing reparations supporters like Lammy such high roles is another reason they know they can go for it and win. Starmer is a cuck.
Starmer should just have said “nah. Fuck off, I’m not signing that, it commits us to reparations”
But of course he’s incapable of showing backbone because he doesn’t have one, and deep down he agrees that Britain is evil and should pay
And that's the difference between him and Blair. Blair would have just laughed the whole discussion off and told the commonwealth nations to get back in their box because he fundamentally loved this country. Starmer very clearly doesn't, he sees us as part of the evil colonialist axis as so many lefties were indoctrinated to believe when they went to university by Marxist professors.
Could anyone imagine Margaret Thatcher, or even John Major signing it!
I don’t believe he’ll ever commit the UK to paying billions.
What he will do is offer some abject, and completely insincere, apology for slavery, before agreeing to pay symbolic reparations to governments who’ll stick the money in their offshore accounts.
That will set a precedent for anyone with a grudge against the UK to come calling.
One can imagine Cameron taking a similar line if he were PM now. Times have changed since the Thatcher era.
Osborne, yes. Cameron, I think not.
Impossible to imagine a British PM now suggesting, as Cameron did, that he was proud of the Empire. But that was only 2013.
The last 10 years have really been a roller coaster.
I think it's strange that as the world moves back towards the pre-1945 view that the strong do as they will, the weak as they must, our own leaders are in complete denial about it.
That’s the point I made yesterday about our increasingly Hobbesian world.
I don’t wish for Britain to surrender its long-standing support for international institutions, but there seems to be gross lack of realpolitik and, at the end of the day, simple self-belief.
The Empire to me a key battle-line, because it is an essential part of British experience 1600-1960. It’s impossible to imagine the UK without it.
And therefore a total repudiation and condemnation of it really calls into question whether the UK itself has any legitimacy.
Exactly, which is no doubt the agenda some secretly harbour.
Destroying the sense of the nation state makes it easier to be subsumed into a United States of Europe.
Absolute lunatic comment.
The end goal of the repudiation that I talk about is the end of Western order itself, to be replaced presumably by some breed of indigenous, socialist republics.
To the extent this aids any realistic geopolitical goal, it is China’s.
I think you're right about the overall view, I'm giving the Starmer view on why this is desirable. His destruction of the UK as a nation state of which we can be proud of is to ensure when we get asked again we will definitely say yes and it paves the way for European nations to be replaced by a United States of Europe.
Do you think that English people's pride in being English has to be destroyed is a necessary precondition for the existence of the United Kingdom?
One of the reasons I have always been enthusiastic about a United Europe is that I see very naturally in the example of the UK how people can have more than a single identity, and can be in a state called Europe at the same time as also being British, English, Welsh, French, etc.
Britain is a model of confident amalgamated nationhood that Europe could follow. Confident enough in the future of the whole not to feel that the identities, flags and sports teams of the constituent parts had to be erased. All too often the Right betray their lack of confidence in Britain in their attacks on British participation in European cooperation, and on devolved government within the UK.
People on the Right really despise Britain. This is why they think it will fall apart under the slightest provocation, and are constantly slagging off any British people who fail to conform to ther narrow and conception of the country.
I just want to point out that when the Chagos Surrender happened and I went ape-shit on here, there was a lot of scoffing and “oh who cares it’s a tiny atoll you’ve never heard of before”
I responded that
1. I had definitely heard of it
2. The surrender was totally unnecessary and a strategic error of enormous proportions
And
3. One of the many reasons it was such a strategic error was that it would encourage all our enemies to take a run at us, perceiving us as weak and spineless with a stupid cowardly leader willing to yield to anything
Et voila
Indeed, there's no way that reparations or anything as stupid as that would be on the agenda had we not just paid billions to Mauritius to take the Chagos Islands off our hands. The Carribbean sense weakness and Starmer appointing reparations supporters like Lammy such high roles is another reason they know they can go for it and win. Starmer is a cuck.
Starmer should just have said “nah. Fuck off, I’m not signing that, it commits us to reparations”
But of course he’s incapable of showing backbone because he doesn’t have one, and deep down he agrees that Britain is evil and should pay
And that's the difference between him and Blair. Blair would have just laughed the whole discussion off and told the commonwealth nations to get back in their box because he fundamentally loved this country. Starmer very clearly doesn't, he sees us as part of the evil colonialist axis as so many lefties were indoctrinated to believe when they went to university by Marxist professors.
Could anyone imagine Margaret Thatcher, or even John Major signing it!
I don’t believe he’ll ever commit the UK to paying billions.
What he will do is offer some abject, and completely insincere, apology for slavery, before agreeing to pay symbolic reparations to governments who’ll stick the money in their offshore accounts.
That will set a precedent for anyone with a grudge against the UK to come calling.
One can imagine Cameron taking a similar line if he were PM now. Times have changed since the Thatcher era.
Osborne, yes. Cameron, I think not.
Impossible to imagine a British PM now suggesting, as Cameron did, that he was proud of the Empire. But that was only 2013.
The last 10 years have really been a roller coaster.
I think it's strange that as the world moves back towards the pre-1945 view that the strong do as they will, the weak as they must, our own leaders are in complete denial about it.
That’s the point I made yesterday about our increasingly Hobbesian world.
I don’t wish for Britain to surrender its long-standing support for international institutions, but there seems to be gross lack of realpolitik and, at the end of the day, simple self-belief.
The Empire to me a key battle-line, because it is an essential part of British experience 1600-1960. It’s impossible to imagine the UK without it.
And therefore a total repudiation and condemnation of it really calls into question whether the UK itself has any legitimacy.
Exactly, which is no doubt the agenda some secretly harbour.
Destroying the sense of the nation state makes it easier to be subsumed into a United States of Europe.
Absolute lunatic comment.
The end goal of the repudiation that I talk about is the end of Western order itself, to be replaced presumably by some breed of indigenous, socialist republics.
To the extent this aids any realistic geopolitical goal, it is China’s.
I think you're right about the overall view, I'm giving the Starmer view on why this is desirable. His destruction of the UK as a nation state of which we can be proud of is to ensure when we get asked again we will definitely say yes and it paves the way for European nations to be replaced by a United States of Europe.
Do you think that English people's pride in being English has to be destroyed is a necessary precondition for the existence of the United Kingdom?
One of the reasons I have always been enthusiastic about a United Europe is that I see very naturally in the example of the UK how people can have more than a single identity, and can be in a state called Europe at the same time as also being British, English, Welsh, French, etc.
Britain is a model of confident amalgamated nationhood that Europe could follow. Confident enough in the future of the whole not to feel that the identities, flags and sports teams of the constituent parts had to be erased. All too often the Right betray their lack of confidence in Britain in their attacks on British participation in European cooperation, and on devolved government within the UK.
Yes. From here, north of the border, I can respect the motivations of both those who voted for Leave and for Indy, and those for Remain and for the Union. The former feel that Scotland can only reach its potential as totally independent; the latter only as part of wider unions.
Many of those who voted "inconsistently" were trying to game democracy, IMO. Left-wing indy supporters who voted Remain because they didn't like the Tories; leaver Unionists because they don't like SNP or Labour. I don't have much time for either position.
Max’s piece is fine as far as it goes, but below the line he is reduced to pleading for more cookery lessons.
The last government near-bankrupted the country. Osborne starved infrastructure (and is now said to regret it), and the Tories wasted years down a Brexit wank-hole. Sunak was simply inept, and he and Hunt left a frankly impossible set of forward projections.
Starmer and Reeves don’t inspire much, but it’s also fair to say they’ve been left with the worst inheritance of any government since the 1970s. And the forthcoming NI rise merely reverse Hunt’s unaffordable cuts.
You don’t like it, I don’t like it, but taxes must increase given the demographic of the country. It’s true in the UK and it’s true around the world. Only the US is really able to keep printing debt to avoid that trade-off, and even there reality will one day will catch up with them.
Yup. That's the first point.
The second is that if you say that out loud in an election, you inevitably lose to someone with the dishonesty to say "no, everything is fine, here have another tax cut". I might wish that weren't the case, but it's true. Lies are more powerful than truths in the short term.
So the least-bad fix is... roughly what looks like it's incoming. Lots to dislike about it, and it may not work, but the alternatives are worse.
The electorate need to cop on and take responsibility, otherwise democracy is essentially impossible.
I don't think things are as bad as you make out, although it does often look like it.
Well remember at the last election we were talking on here about many people only paying attention in the last couple of days. Sorry that isnt good enough and we should say that. And dont give me the guff about people being "busy" They have plenty of time to watch Love Island
It’s obvious from the reporting that the UK suffered a diplomatic defeat at the Commonwealth.
Reparations were not even on the agenda, so the UK has been “hijacked”. And despite Starmer’s pleading, it is not obvious at all the money is not to be discussed.
Starmer said none of the discussions at the summit had concerned money.
“Well, no figure,” Frederick Mitchell, the foreign minister of the Bahamas told BBC Radio’s Today programme on Saturday. “We’ll see what happens going forward.”
He said he hoped a report on the issue would follow, which nations would discuss in the future. Mitchell also mentioned the UK government’s decision in 2013 to recognise the torture of Kenyans by British colonial forces during the Mau Mau uprising, which resulted in a £20m payout. “I have no doubt …. that the arc of history always goes in the right direction,” he said.
The Commonwealth no longer does our bidding, and why should it? After all KC3 is Head of State for a number of the countries pursuing reparations too. Sure we could have thrown our toys out of the pram and refused to sign the declaration, but that pretty much would bang in the final nail in its coffin.
We cannot praise the democratic institutions and rule of law that we bequeathed to the Commonwealth, then refuse to respond to those governments. Either we left them something valid, or we did not.
I don’t think the Commonwealth should do the UK’s bidding. That would be bizarre.
I simply note the UK’s diplomatic defeat on this issue.
The last government created a precedent, it seems:
"Mitchell also mentioned the UK government’s decision in 2013 to recognise the torture of Kenyans by British colonial forces during the Mau Mau uprising, which resulted in a £20m payout."
When you are in a minority you are not going to get your way. I guess the issue is whether you then walk out or just play along knowing you cannot be forced to do anything you do not want to do.
You don't walk out. You just say "No. You must be joking!" and sit there. You certainly don't sign a declaration that opens the door. You refuse to sign. Simple.
That's pretty much the same as walking out. Basically, you leave without a communique. I suspect that is what a lot of previous UK governments would have done. This one chose not to grandstand. Unlike others on here, I don't see that as an act of treason. We decide whether the door opens. It's all in our hands.
They all leave without a communique. It's not us walking out. They all walk out. Not agreeing to reparations is not grandstanding. It's resisting blackmail and I'm sure would have the support of the vast majority in the UK. No doubt there will be a poll soon.
As much as you may wish it otherwise, the UK government has not agreed to reparations.
It has agreed the following:
"Heads, noting calls for discussions on reparatory justice with regard to the trans-Atlantic trade in enslaved Africans and chattel enslavement and recognising the importance of this matter to member states of the Commonwealth, the majority of which share common historical experiences in relation to this abhorrent trade, agreed that the time has come for a meaningful, truthful and respectful conversation towards forging a common future based on equity. Heads further agreed to continue playing an active role in bringing about such inclusive conversations addressing these harms."
So Starmer has agreed to a meaningful conversation on reparations, because that's what it's about. What else?
Perhaps it is a cynical kicking of the discussion into the long grass out of politeness.
I would simply say No. People alive now had nothing to do with slavery on either side. It's a scam.
Yep, to me that looks like a kick into the very long grass. It's very clearly not the UK agreeing to pay reparations.
Starmer getting a load of abuse for this but I am pretty sure he will be doing what the FO says is policy on this one.
We have Ukraine and NATO on a knife edge as we wait for the US election. The Middle East is a tinderbox and could explode totally at any moment. The West generally is distrusted and disliked by large parts of the world. If there's no need for a row - and clearly at this stage there isn't - why have one?
And look at the cause, Western weakness. Time and again we we get slapped in the face by China, Russia etc... and instead of hitting back as hard as we can we cower in the corner and say, "please don't hurt me" as they gear up to do it again and again. We sit on the losing side because we are never confident enough to saddle up and face down the despots, it leads to the likes of Trump winning domestically because people have that feeling too. As I said the other day, Asian people think that Western liberals are soft touch idiots and on the evidence of what Starmer is doing who can blame them.
I just want to point out that when the Chagos Surrender happened and I went ape-shit on here, there was a lot of scoffing and “oh who cares it’s a tiny atoll you’ve never heard of before”
I responded that
1. I had definitely heard of it
2. The surrender was totally unnecessary and a strategic error of enormous proportions
And
3. One of the many reasons it was such a strategic error was that it would encourage all our enemies to take a run at us, perceiving us as weak and spineless with a stupid cowardly leader willing to yield to anything
Et voila
Indeed, there's no way that reparations or anything as stupid as that would be on the agenda had we not just paid billions to Mauritius to take the Chagos Islands off our hands. The Carribbean sense weakness and Starmer appointing reparations supporters like Lammy such high roles is another reason they know they can go for it and win. Starmer is a cuck.
Starmer should just have said “nah. Fuck off, I’m not signing that, it commits us to reparations”
But of course he’s incapable of showing backbone because he doesn’t have one, and deep down he agrees that Britain is evil and should pay
And that's the difference between him and Blair. Blair would have just laughed the whole discussion off and told the commonwealth nations to get back in their box because he fundamentally loved this country. Starmer very clearly doesn't, he sees us as part of the evil colonialist axis as so many lefties were indoctrinated to believe when they went to university by Marxist professors.
Could anyone imagine Margaret Thatcher, or even John Major signing it!
I don’t believe he’ll ever commit the UK to paying billions.
What he will do is offer some abject, and completely insincere, apology for slavery, before agreeing to pay symbolic reparations to governments who’ll stick the money in their offshore accounts.
That will set a precedent for anyone with a grudge against the UK to come calling.
One can imagine Cameron taking a similar line if he were PM now. Times have changed since the Thatcher era.
Osborne, yes. Cameron, I think not.
Impossible to imagine a British PM now suggesting, as Cameron did, that he was proud of the Empire. But that was only 2013.
The last 10 years have really been a roller coaster.
So did Blair.
FWIW, I still think the Empire was on balance a good thing - and I don't even think it's on balance, but clearly a good thing.
Why do you think the Empire was a good thing?
The modern world would be unrecognisable without the Empire.
We wouldn't have free liberal democracies like the United States, Canada, New Zealand or Australia nor large multireligious and panethnic democratic states like India and South Africa. We would not have Carribean and African states endeavouring to follow that path. We would not have free international trade, we would not have been able to fight and win WW1 or WW2, we would not have the UN, Human Rights or the rule of law as an international principle. Countries like Singapore and South Korea wouldn't exist and Japan would have taken a different path.
We'd have a world of autocracy instead, with fewer rights, more suffering, more cruelty and less human development. It'd be China, Iran and Russia writ-large. Dictators and Theocracies where might made right.
The handwringing we have now is, I think, in direct relationship to our waning power and influence and is in some sense a response to it: it's to try and keep us at the centre of ongoing geopolitical conversations - ones that our rivals absolutely don't respect and, in fact, use to hold us in contempt.
I don't agree with all these points, but I do think we have a bizarre idea that handwringing gains us something either in terms of our national progression or in geopolitical terms, and I really don't think that is the case.
And I do think handwringing is distinct from acknowledging things, but the former is what is pushed.
If one doesn't agree one has to argue from where else democracy would have spawned and how it'd have been defended and advanced at the same time.
It's not a long list. France is probably the closest and they had a decidedly jittery and mixed record.
I agree. But you also need to step back and consider why democracy spawned in UK, France and elsewhere. It's not easy to answer but in general I'd argue against British or European exceptionalism and in favour of the idea that democracy flourishes when nations create the conditions for it to flourish.
By contrast, democracy was often imposed on colonies without there being the conditions for it to flourish and hasn't always 'stuck' post-empire as a result.
No doubt other states might have experimented with proto-democracies at times but, like the Roman Republic or Ancient Greece, they wouldn't have lasted.
What made Britain different was that it was a stable, secure and wealthy polity from which it was able to project and maintain its power, and it believed in its sense of mission over multiple generations.
TBF, most Caribbean countries have done pretty well, post independence, on the back of being tax havens, and tourist centres. Haiti and Cuba are the obvious exceptions.
Have you been?
The only saving grace is the French ones are poorer and more dilapidated than ours, and they still own them.
It’s obvious from the reporting that the UK suffered a diplomatic defeat at the Commonwealth.
Reparations were not even on the agenda, so the UK has been “hijacked”. And despite Starmer’s pleading, it is not obvious at all the money is not to be discussed.
Starmer said none of the discussions at the summit had concerned money.
“Well, no figure,” Frederick Mitchell, the foreign minister of the Bahamas told BBC Radio’s Today programme on Saturday. “We’ll see what happens going forward.”
He said he hoped a report on the issue would follow, which nations would discuss in the future. Mitchell also mentioned the UK government’s decision in 2013 to recognise the torture of Kenyans by British colonial forces during the Mau Mau uprising, which resulted in a £20m payout. “I have no doubt …. that the arc of history always goes in the right direction,” he said.
The Commonwealth no longer does our bidding, and why should it? After all KC3 is Head of State for a number of the countries pursuing reparations too. Sure we could have thrown our toys out of the pram and refused to sign the declaration, but that pretty much would bang in the final nail in its coffin.
We cannot praise the democratic institutions and rule of law that we bequeathed to the Commonwealth, then refuse to respond to those governments. Either we left them something valid, or we did not.
I don’t think the Commonwealth should do the UK’s bidding. That would be bizarre.
I simply note the UK’s diplomatic defeat on this issue.
The last government created a precedent, it seems:
"Mitchell also mentioned the UK government’s decision in 2013 to recognise the torture of Kenyans by British colonial forces during the Mau Mau uprising, which resulted in a £20m payout."
When you are in a minority you are not going to get your way. I guess the issue is whether you then walk out or just play along knowing you cannot be forced to do anything you do not want to do.
You don't walk out. You just say "No. You must be joking!" and sit there. You certainly don't sign a declaration that opens the door. You refuse to sign. Simple.
That's pretty much the same as walking out. Basically, you leave without a communique. I suspect that is what a lot of previous UK governments would have done. This one chose not to grandstand. Unlike others on here, I don't see that as an act of treason. We decide whether the door opens. It's all in our hands.
They all leave without a communique. It's not us walking out. They all walk out. Not agreeing to reparations is not grandstanding. It's resisting blackmail and I'm sure would have the support of the vast majority in the UK. No doubt there will be a poll soon.
As much as you may wish it otherwise, the UK government has not agreed to reparations.
It has agreed the following:
"Heads, noting calls for discussions on reparatory justice with regard to the trans-Atlantic trade in enslaved Africans and chattel enslavement and recognising the importance of this matter to member states of the Commonwealth, the majority of which share common historical experiences in relation to this abhorrent trade, agreed that the time has come for a meaningful, truthful and respectful conversation towards forging a common future based on equity. Heads further agreed to continue playing an active role in bringing about such inclusive conversations addressing these harms."
So Starmer has agreed to a meaningful conversation on reparations, because that's what it's about. What else?
Perhaps it is a cynical kicking of the discussion into the long grass out of politeness.
I would simply say No. People alive now had nothing to do with slavery on either side. It's a scam.
Yep, to me that looks like a kick into the very long grass. It's very clearly not the UK agreeing to pay reparations.
I think Starmer's strategy was to find a way of saying no without aggravating the Caribbean nations so much they end up in China's sphere of influence. "A conversation towards forging a common future based on equity" can mean absolutely anything.
Yep, it's big, thick, sticky fudge. If you can get that instead of a big argument at a time when the geopolitical headwinds are massively difficult, why not?
TBF, most Caribbean countries have done pretty well, post independence, on the back of being tax havens, and tourist centres. Haiti and Cuba are the obvious exceptions.
It’s obvious from the reporting that the UK suffered a diplomatic defeat at the Commonwealth.
Reparations were not even on the agenda, so the UK has been “hijacked”. And despite Starmer’s pleading, it is not obvious at all the money is not to be discussed.
Starmer said none of the discussions at the summit had concerned money.
“Well, no figure,” Frederick Mitchell, the foreign minister of the Bahamas told BBC Radio’s Today programme on Saturday. “We’ll see what happens going forward.”
He said he hoped a report on the issue would follow, which nations would discuss in the future. Mitchell also mentioned the UK government’s decision in 2013 to recognise the torture of Kenyans by British colonial forces during the Mau Mau uprising, which resulted in a £20m payout. “I have no doubt …. that the arc of history always goes in the right direction,” he said.
The Commonwealth no longer does our bidding, and why should it? After all KC3 is Head of State for a number of the countries pursuing reparations too. Sure we could have thrown our toys out of the pram and refused to sign the declaration, but that pretty much would bang in the final nail in its coffin.
We cannot praise the democratic institutions and rule of law that we bequeathed to the Commonwealth, then refuse to respond to those governments. Either we left them something valid, or we did not.
I don’t think the Commonwealth should do the UK’s bidding. That would be bizarre.
I simply note the UK’s diplomatic defeat on this issue.
The last government created a precedent, it seems:
"Mitchell also mentioned the UK government’s decision in 2013 to recognise the torture of Kenyans by British colonial forces during the Mau Mau uprising, which resulted in a £20m payout."
When you are in a minority you are not going to get your way. I guess the issue is whether you then walk out or just play along knowing you cannot be forced to do anything you do not want to do.
You don't walk out. You just say "No. You must be joking!" and sit there. You certainly don't sign a declaration that opens the door. You refuse to sign. Simple.
That's pretty much the same as walking out. Basically, you leave without a communique. I suspect that is what a lot of previous UK governments would have done. This one chose not to grandstand. Unlike others on here, I don't see that as an act of treason. We decide whether the door opens. It's all in our hands.
They all leave without a communique. It's not us walking out. They all walk out. Not agreeing to reparations is not grandstanding. It's resisting blackmail and I'm sure would have the support of the vast majority in the UK. No doubt there will be a poll soon.
As much as you may wish it otherwise, the UK government has not agreed to reparations.
It has agreed the following:
"Heads, noting calls for discussions on reparatory justice with regard to the trans-Atlantic trade in enslaved Africans and chattel enslavement and recognising the importance of this matter to member states of the Commonwealth, the majority of which share common historical experiences in relation to this abhorrent trade, agreed that the time has come for a meaningful, truthful and respectful conversation towards forging a common future based on equity. Heads further agreed to continue playing an active role in bringing about such inclusive conversations addressing these harms."
So Starmer has agreed to a meaningful conversation on reparations, because that's what it's about. What else?
Perhaps it is a cynical kicking of the discussion into the long grass out of politeness.
I would simply say No. People alive now had nothing to do with slavery on either side. It's a scam.
Yep, to me that looks like a kick into the very long grass. It's very clearly not the UK agreeing to pay reparations.
Starmer getting a load of abuse for this but I am pretty sure he will be doing what the FO says is policy on this one.
We have Ukraine and NATO on a knife edge as we wait for the US election. The Middle East is a tinderbox and could explode totally at any moment. The West generally is distrusted and disliked by large parts of the world. If there's no need for a row - and clearly at this stage there isn't - why have one?
And look at the cause, Western weakness. Time and again we we get slapped in the face by China, Russia etc... and instead of hitting back as hard as we can we cower in the corner and say, "please don't hurt me" as they gear up to do it again and again. We sit on the losing side because we are never confident enough to saddle up and face down the despots, it leads to the likes of Trump winning domestically because people have that feeling too. As I said the other day, Asian people think that Western liberals are soft touch idiots and on the evidence of what Starmer is doing who can blame them.
It’s obvious from the reporting that the UK suffered a diplomatic defeat at the Commonwealth.
Reparations were not even on the agenda, so the UK has been “hijacked”. And despite Starmer’s pleading, it is not obvious at all the money is not to be discussed.
Starmer said none of the discussions at the summit had concerned money.
“Well, no figure,” Frederick Mitchell, the foreign minister of the Bahamas told BBC Radio’s Today programme on Saturday. “We’ll see what happens going forward.”
He said he hoped a report on the issue would follow, which nations would discuss in the future. Mitchell also mentioned the UK government’s decision in 2013 to recognise the torture of Kenyans by British colonial forces during the Mau Mau uprising, which resulted in a £20m payout. “I have no doubt …. that the arc of history always goes in the right direction,” he said.
The Commonwealth no longer does our bidding, and why should it? After all KC3 is Head of State for a number of the countries pursuing reparations too. Sure we could have thrown our toys out of the pram and refused to sign the declaration, but that pretty much would bang in the final nail in its coffin.
We cannot praise the democratic institutions and rule of law that we bequeathed to the Commonwealth, then refuse to respond to those governments. Either we left them something valid, or we did not.
I don’t think the Commonwealth should do the UK’s bidding. That would be bizarre.
I simply note the UK’s diplomatic defeat on this issue.
The last government created a precedent, it seems:
"Mitchell also mentioned the UK government’s decision in 2013 to recognise the torture of Kenyans by British colonial forces during the Mau Mau uprising, which resulted in a £20m payout."
When you are in a minority you are not going to get your way. I guess the issue is whether you then walk out or just play along knowing you cannot be forced to do anything you do not want to do.
You don't walk out. You just say "No. You must be joking!" and sit there. You certainly don't sign a declaration that opens the door. You refuse to sign. Simple.
That's pretty much the same as walking out. Basically, you leave without a communique. I suspect that is what a lot of previous UK governments would have done. This one chose not to grandstand. Unlike others on here, I don't see that as an act of treason. We decide whether the door opens. It's all in our hands.
They all leave without a communique. It's not us walking out. They all walk out. Not agreeing to reparations is not grandstanding. It's resisting blackmail and I'm sure would have the support of the vast majority in the UK. No doubt there will be a poll soon.
As much as you may wish it otherwise, the UK government has not agreed to reparations.
It has agreed the following:
"Heads, noting calls for discussions on reparatory justice with regard to the trans-Atlantic trade in enslaved Africans and chattel enslavement and recognising the importance of this matter to member states of the Commonwealth, the majority of which share common historical experiences in relation to this abhorrent trade, agreed that the time has come for a meaningful, truthful and respectful conversation towards forging a common future based on equity. Heads further agreed to continue playing an active role in bringing about such inclusive conversations addressing these harms."
So Starmer has agreed to a meaningful conversation on reparations, because that's what it's about. What else?
Perhaps it is a cynical kicking of the discussion into the long grass out of politeness.
I would simply say No. People alive now had nothing to do with slavery on either side. It's a scam.
Yep, to me that looks like a kick into the very long grass. It's very clearly not the UK agreeing to pay reparations.
I think Starmer's strategy was to find a way of saying no without aggravating the Caribbean nations so much they end up in China's sphere of influence. "A conversation towards forging a common future based on equity" can mean absolutely anything.
Yep, it's big, thick, sticky fudge. If you can get that instead of a big argument at a time when the geopolitical headwinds are massively difficult, why not?
You think he's avoided a big argument?
Chortle.
It's laughable isn't it. He's avoided an argument by saying yes to having one? The sky is green, war is peace and all that.
🔺 NEW: Sir Keir Starmer has been forced to promise Commonwealth countries that Britain will discuss reparations for slavery next year as he failed to quash an official call for damages
As I said before, I think he's actually a traitor. He loathes this country and can't wait to destroy it.
Agreed. It can only be that.
If he’s not a traitor he is the worst politician in history who always ends up with the worst possible deal for this country. Remember he’s the guy who not only gave away the Chagos to China but AGREED A DEAL WHERE WE PAY FOR THAT
He (i.e., we) will be ripped apart by China, the EU, Spain, the Commonwealth and the USA in any trade deal or geopolitical negotiation over the next 4 years. It's going to cost us a fortune. Some of it permanently, I'm afraid.
I just hope the Tories can unpick it all when they reset and get back in office 🙏
He is a traitorous c*nt
Remember that one of the “reasons” for the Chagos Surrender was that it would “increase our influence and soft power”. Instead everyone has laughed at Starmer and Labour for being such a weak bunch of fucking cucks and now they are demanding the UK pay seven trillion quid and forcing Starmer to sign this communique
WANKERS
He's surely empowered Putin too. How long before Russian tanks are in Sevenoaks because the great big girl's blouse is too scared to use Trident?
Reading some of today’s comments, I’m worried that some on here would prefer Putin to Starmer. I’m thinking I’ve accidentally logged onto Con Home.
It's like we've turned into the cigar room in some Mayfair den in the 70s.
Chaps cussing the reds and working themselves up into a right old lather.
Do you think Harris is a good candidate.
Yes.
Did you see her performance on cnn townhall. Embarassing. Even Anderson Cooper wasnt impressed.
It's Saturday, Clark is new and Clark is pro-Trump. You don't think....
I just want to point out that when the Chagos Surrender happened and I went ape-shit on here, there was a lot of scoffing and “oh who cares it’s a tiny atoll you’ve never heard of before”
I responded that
1. I had definitely heard of it
2. The surrender was totally unnecessary and a strategic error of enormous proportions
And
3. One of the many reasons it was such a strategic error was that it would encourage all our enemies to take a run at us, perceiving us as weak and spineless with a stupid cowardly leader willing to yield to anything
Et voila
Indeed, there's no way that reparations or anything as stupid as that would be on the agenda had we not just paid billions to Mauritius to take the Chagos Islands off our hands. The Carribbean sense weakness and Starmer appointing reparations supporters like Lammy such high roles is another reason they know they can go for it and win. Starmer is a cuck.
Starmer should just have said “nah. Fuck off, I’m not signing that, it commits us to reparations”
But of course he’s incapable of showing backbone because he doesn’t have one, and deep down he agrees that Britain is evil and should pay
And that's the difference between him and Blair. Blair would have just laughed the whole discussion off and told the commonwealth nations to get back in their box because he fundamentally loved this country. Starmer very clearly doesn't, he sees us as part of the evil colonialist axis as so many lefties were indoctrinated to believe when they went to university by Marxist professors.
Could anyone imagine Margaret Thatcher, or even John Major signing it!
I don’t believe he’ll ever commit the UK to paying billions.
What he will do is offer some abject, and completely insincere, apology for slavery, before agreeing to pay symbolic reparations to governments who’ll stick the money in their offshore accounts.
That will set a precedent for anyone with a grudge against the UK to come calling.
One can imagine Cameron taking a similar line if he were PM now. Times have changed since the Thatcher era.
Osborne, yes. Cameron, I think not.
Impossible to imagine a British PM now suggesting, as Cameron did, that he was proud of the Empire. But that was only 2013.
The last 10 years have really been a roller coaster.
I think it's strange that as the world moves back towards the pre-1945 view that the strong do as they will, the weak as they must, our own leaders are in complete denial about it.
That’s the point I made yesterday about our increasingly Hobbesian world.
I don’t wish for Britain to surrender its long-standing support for international institutions, but there seems to be gross lack of realpolitik and, at the end of the day, simple self-belief.
The Empire to me a key battle-line, because it is an essential part of British experience 1600-1960. It’s impossible to imagine the UK without it.
And therefore a total repudiation and condemnation of it really calls into question whether the UK itself has any legitimacy.
Exactly, which is no doubt the agenda some secretly harbour.
Destroying the sense of the nation state makes it easier to be subsumed into a United States of Europe.
Absolute lunatic comment.
The end goal of the repudiation that I talk about is the end of Western order itself, to be replaced presumably by some breed of indigenous, socialist republics.
To the extent this aids any realistic geopolitical goal, it is China’s.
I think you're right about the overall view, I'm giving the Starmer view on why this is desirable. His destruction of the UK as a nation state of which we can be proud of is to ensure when we get asked again we will definitely say yes and it paves the way for European nations to be replaced by a United States of Europe.
Do you think that English people's pride in being English has to be destroyed is a necessary precondition for the existence of the United Kingdom?
One of the reasons I have always been enthusiastic about a United Europe is that I see very naturally in the example of the UK how people can have more than a single identity, and can be in a state called Europe at the same time as also being British, English, Welsh, French, etc.
Britain is a model of confident amalgamated nationhood that Europe could follow. Confident enough in the future of the whole not to feel that the identities, flags and sports teams of the constituent parts had to be erased. All too often the Right betray their lack of confidence in Britain in their attacks on British participation in European cooperation, and on devolved government within the UK.
People on the Right really despise Britain. This is why they think it will fall apart under the slightest provocation, and are constantly slagging off any British people who fail to conform to ther narrow and conception of the country.
I know you're only trolling but LP had it right - the right doesn't despise Britain for the most part, they just have a fundamental lack of confidence about the UK because their view of it is built on sands that have shifted (empire, global prestige, dominance over other nations by dint of wealth disparities). Many just seem unable to adapt to our country as it is today and become increasingly brittle and bitter that the world they used to know no longer exists.
Comments
I have seen such absurdity argued by Republicans in the USA, so not surprised to see the same amongst their fellow travellers here.
I can see no difference from prisoners in Ukraine who have been captured, and are castrated (we had a video of one case early in the war) or murdered. If said prisoners have committed crimes themselves, then that is a separate matter for a separate trial.
"These crimes were committed by British colonial officials and have gone unrecognised and unpunished for decades. They included castration, rape and repeated violence of the worst kind. Although they occurred many years ago, the physical and mental scars remain.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/06/uk-compensate-kenya-mau-mau-torture
Wouldn't you?
Or do Labour politicians get a free pass?
In the meantime, the government will get things right and wrong. It's the thirst for vindication by the 25%, the lack of any "maybe the public were right" that is striking.
Remember kids, Thatcher was comfortably behind in the polls this long after the '79 election, and the first turning point was when Labour elected a leader who spoke to their hearts but simply wasn't a plausible PM.
Now he's done that he has committed Britain and it sets a precedent that will be very difficult to wriggle out of in future.
Conversely, if they were told a firm and yielding no, all along, they'd go away and stop asking, and change the subject onto something else that better suited their mutual development.
I understand those pilling on do not agree with my politics but it is that that is the essence of this forum
Will the Right push it as a potential prospect too much? Quite possibly, parties do that sometimes when they think they are onto a winner, they overplay their hand, but it is a ridiculous idea and impractical to boot, so if it comes up organically I see no issue with ripping the idea to shreds.
I was eight months old when Thatcher became PM but people who lived through that era told me that Thatcher would be replaced PDQ after
i) putting up VAT from 8% to 15%
ii) the race riots
iii) the recession
iv) spending cuts
I mean she even capitulated to Arthur Scargill/the NUM.
I really have no particular enthusiasm for the Labour Party. Many of us on here today have been accused of being Labour shills by partisan Conservatives. Since the days of Corbyn I am no lover of Labour and I am content to call them out for genuine missteps, although not innuendo or fake news until it had been proven to be true.
I do have to confess that I absolutely despise Johnsonian Conservatives. Not one nation feudal Tories, they are fine- if there are any left, just miserable lying, corrupt Charlatans.
It's unarguable and you're only defending it because it's a Labour PM who's done it; deep-down you know it to be the true disaster it really is.
Labour in power will be depicted as all the bad parts of Corbynism plus punitive austerity plus a bit of pointless authoritarianism thrown in. The labour party will just collapse.
The boy's problem was the pointlessness of the lie, you need to save them for important moments, like election campaigns.
My other idea is that we impose a tax on the Libyan Coastguard to pay reparations. After we have done paying off slavery, they pay off the reparations for the activities of… the Libyan Coastguard.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c207m3m0xpjo
"Heads, noting calls for discussions on reparatory justice with regard to the trans-Atlantic trade in enslaved Africans and chattel enslavement and recognising the importance of this matter to member states of the Commonwealth, the majority of which share common historical experiences in relation to this abhorrent trade, agreed that the time has come for a meaningful, truthful and respectful conversation towards forging a common future based on equity. Heads further agreed to continue playing an active role in bringing about such inclusive conversations addressing these harms."
So Starmer has agreed to a meaningful conversation on reparations, because that's what it's about. What else?
Perhaps it's Starmer kicking the discussion into the long grass out of politeness.
I would simply say No. People alive now had nothing to do with slavery on either side. It's a scam. I wouldn't raise expectations. I'd shut them down.
I will hold my hands up as someone who, in an ideal world, would like to see the dissolution of national-level states in favour of much smaller (say US-sized) states in a sort of global federal system. However, in the actual world we inhabit, such a move would be nonsense as it would just cede power to China, India and USA, none of which strike me as particularly reliable at present.
However much you dislike Starmer, this isn't remotely what he's doing.
We do, however, have a crisis of legitimacy in the West. Sticking our ears full of cotton wool and loudly singing "we won't talk about the wealth we have gained off the back of empire" is only going to consign us to irrelevance.
Engaging in debates about eg reparations and then making a considered, ethical decision that is within the dictates of international law should be welcomed by anyone who hopes the UK will still have a global role in 50 years time, as it is more likely to help us retain global soft power.
That's not to say that Starmer is doing or will do this well. But the incoherent rage from some on here about every foreign policy move of his is lamentable in my view (not looking particularly at you CR, much of what you write is thoughtful and interesting, although I realise this is in reply to a rather incoherent and rageful post in this particular case).
The reparation demand just irritates me. Grifting. Sod off.
We wouldn't have free liberal democracies like the United States, Canada, New Zealand or Australia nor large multireligious and panethnic democratic states like India and South Africa. We would not have Carribean and African states endeavouring to follow that path. We would not have free international trade, we would not have been able to fight and win WW1 or WW2, we would not have the UN, Human Rights or the rule of law as an international principle. Countries like Singapore and South Korea wouldn't exist and Japan would have taken a different path.
We'd have a world of autocracy instead, with fewer rights, more suffering, more cruelty and less human development. It'd be China, Iran and Russia writ-large. Dictators and Theocracies where might made right.
The handwringing we have now is, I think, in direct relationship to our waning power and influence and is in some sense a response to it: it's to try and keep us at the centre of ongoing geopolitical conversations - ones that our rivals absolutely don't respect and, in fact, use to hold us in contempt.
But being in is still better than being out, especially when we're staring down the barrel of long term decline.
Is it our job to have an immigration policy that principally benefits the UK? Or that mainly benefits other countries?
Fwiw, I suspect working holiday visas for young people from the third world might be the best way of achieving the second option. Allow people from Africa to learn skills and return. A lot of the Polish tech industry is run by people who spent five years in the UK developing skills, who then returned to Poland.
And I do think handwringing is distinct from acknowledging things, but the former is what is pushed.
It is an irritating grift, sure, but not one the British government, any British government, could do much about beyond this.
(One of the election timelines involved Rishi taking some time off campaigning for this summit. Or calling the election now, off the back of it. Presumably he couldn't have signed up to this communique, but that would have also had political costs.)
Claiming that we can avoid health costs by better health is a chimera. Individuals may live healthier longer and good luck to them but it simply is not the answer to the exorbitant cost of health care. It simply moves the costs from 1 pile to another. And on that cheerful note I think I am going for a drink.
Premier League clubs are commemorating Remembrance Sunday this weekend.
It is utter woke nonsense to commemorate Remembrance Sunday five days before Halloween
If we are to have high levels of immigration, and we need it, I prefer the opposite path of encouraging them to integrate into society rather than be transient workers.
That’s very different to compensating people for wrongs done by people long dead to people long dead.
It's not a long list. France is probably the closest and they had a decidedly jittery and mixed record.
By contrast, democracy was often imposed on colonies without there being the conditions for it to flourish and hasn't always 'stuck' post-empire as a result.
One of the reasons I have always been enthusiastic about a United Europe is that I see very naturally in the example of the UK how people can have more than a single identity, and can be in a state called Europe at the same time as also being British, English, Welsh, French, etc.
Britain is a model of confident amalgamated nationhood that Europe could follow. Confident enough in the future of the whole not to feel that the identities, flags and sports teams of the constituent parts had to be erased. All too often the Right betray their lack of confidence in Britain in their attacks on British participation in European cooperation, and on devolved government within the UK.
Beer later!
Many of those who voted "inconsistently" were trying to game democracy, IMO. Left-wing indy supporters who voted Remain because they didn't like the Tories; leaver Unionists because they don't like SNP or Labour. I don't have much time for either position.
What made Britain different was that it was a stable, secure and wealthy polity from which it was able to project and maintain its power, and it believed in its sense of mission over multiple generations.
The only saving grace is the French ones are poorer and more dilapidated than ours, and they still own them.
Chortle.
We need to man up.