Imperialism is back – and this time it’s politically correct

‘Why did you leave us?’ said the old Sudanese man in Omdurman market. ‘Things were so much better when you were here.’ He was talking about the British empire, of course, and apologies if I’ve told the story before, as I know I have. It’s just that it’s such a fantastically satisfying way of winding up all those guilt-ridden post-colonial types who find it a source of shame and embarrassment that the world’s atlas was once half-covered pink.

I don’t though. Not at all. What shames me far more are the mistakes we’re now making as a response to that guilt. We’re still treating the Africans like children; and we’re still ripping them off. But where before we at least gave them a functioning administration and justice system and a passable transport infrastructure, now all we’re offering them is a bunch of Ruperts with Soas degrees in sustainability, zooming around in Land Cruisers in search of hot French doctors from Médicins San Frontières to shag, while helping the local economy barely one jot.

There are now 100,000 aid workers in sub-Saharan Africa. As Jonathan Foreman notes in his superb Civitas pamphlet Aiding and Abetting, this ‘greatly exceeds the number of foreign administrators engaged by the former colonial powers at the height of the imperial era.’ And to what end? Since 1960, western governments have pumped more than $1 trillion in aid into the region, with the remarkable result that GDP per capita has declined.

A few months back, Foreman and I appeared at the Durham University Union, proposing the motion ‘This house would put Britain before Bangladesh’. We lost, as I knew we would. (Because I’d already lost debating a similar motion at Oxford last year.)