The reparations racket

I have been trying to interest MPs of all parties in joining my call to persuade Barbados to say ‘thank you’ to Britain for the extra 17 years of life they enjoy as a consequence of their distant ancestors having been forcibly transported, hundreds of years ago, from Africa to the Caribbean. Nobody is quite biting my hand off at the moment, I have to say. They seem to think that the issue is a little ticklish right now.

I had mentioned the whole business on last week’s Any Questions? but the audience seemed too appalled even to boo and sat there with their middle-class jaws sagging open, as if they’d just been touched up. I ought to stress I would not be demanding money from the Barbadians – just one of those Hallmark thank-you cards would suffice, plus a promise to stop the relentless grifting and instead to try as best they can to get on with their lives.

Of all the post-rational stuff bought into by the new left, none is more idiotic or corrosive than the slavery-imperialism-racism business. In order to sign up you need to be purblind, utterly ignorant (or maybe just dismissive) of history and logic. And yet so terrified are our politicians of being called racist that they either stay silent or kind of murmur their assent for the whole idea of bunging Barbados a few trillion quid, in addition to the foreign aid the country has received over the years.

It is so easy to refute the notion of reparations that it’s almost not worth the bother – but that’s the hole left open for the lefties and the grifters to crawl through, I suppose. First and obviously, it is not entirely clear as to who should be paying these monies.