Since the statue of slave trader Edward Colston was pulled down in Bristol during Black Lives Matter protests in 2020, government ministers have mocked calls for ‘decolonisation’ in Britain as immature identity politics ruining a once-great country.
The government’s universities minister, Michelle Donelan, dismissed student campaigns for ‘decolonisation’ as examples of ‘Soviet Union style’ censorship. Equalities minister Kemi Badenoch declared: “I don’t care about colonialism.” Boris Johnson scorned ‘decolonisation’ as an attempt “to edit or censor our past”.
During Liz Truss’s first speech as foreign secretary, she responded to a question about the global legacy of the British empire by saying: “Let’s stop fighting about the past, let’s start fighting for the future… we have to move away from the introversion and introspection.”
