Ahead of a meeting with Commonwealth leaders, Andy Burnham wrote that Britain needed to ‘acknowledge its complicated history’
Good morning and welcome to our Sunday UK politics blog.
Budget week conversation has moved on a bit; Tory leader Kemi Badenoch is doing the rounds of the politics shows this morning and she has an op-ed in the Telegraph railing against the delayed defence spending commitment, claiming instead that the Conservatives could find that spend while cuting the deficit and lowering taxes.
But she’s also criticised the PM’s announcement yesterday in the Guardian that the government is considering a formal apology for its role in the trans-Atlantic slave trade.
Andy Burnham, who is heading to the Caribbean next week for a Commonwealth leaders meeting, wrote in a column that Britain needed to “acknowledge its complicated history” but rejected the idea of financial reparations.
double quotation mark I do not think that British people today can be held liable for historical wrongs, however heinous, that happened in a different age under different laws and in which they played no personal part.
Cabinet minister Emma Reynolds has repeated to Sky News this morning that an apology is symbolically powerful, but it wouldn’t then lead to financial reparations.
double quotation mark Let me be very clear that will not involve financial reparations, because the British people today shouldn’t be held liable for historic wrongs, wrongs that they had no part in.
I’ll have more on that shortly, including the reaction from Commonwealth leaders.
