Douglas Murray Douglas Murray

How should Prince William respond to questions about slavery?

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It is uncanny how swiftly British culture imitates the worst of American culture. Take Whoopi Goldberg, who distinguished herself again last week on The View. For anyone who does not know, The View is a long-running US TV show in which a collection of the dimmest women in America are invited to opine angrily on things they know nothing about. Goldberg is a long-term resident of this asylum, though she recently had to take a break from the show after declaring that the Holocaust had nothing to do with race, was some white-on-white thing, and in any case (as a woman of colour) didn’t concern her.

Her suspension over, Goldberg returned and immediately began complaining about the royal family – specifically poor Prince William and his wife, who were then at the start of a tour of the Caribbean. Whoopi thought the royals should use their tour to apologise for the crimes of slavery.

Clearly Goldberg labours under a number of delusions. One of these would appear to be that the British monarchy owns Barbados among other islands. Whereas in fact the people of Barbados recently decided to shrug off the benevolent, ceremonial role of the British monarchy in order to sign up as fully indentured servants of the Chinese Communist party. But that is another story.

Within a couple of days, Goldberg’s demented call was replicated on British TV. For our country rejoices in its own version of The View: a show called Loose Women, in which a handful of the thickest women in Britain are likewise invited to opine on matters about which they know nothing. On this ITV show, one Kelle Bryan similarly declared that a slavery apology was needed from the junior royals. According to Bryan: ‘What we’re looking for is an apology.’

It is hard to know what the ‘we’ here means.

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Douglas Murray
Written by
Douglas Murray
Douglas Murray is associate editor of The Spectator and author of The War on the West: How to Prevail in the Age of Unreason, among other books.

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