Howie Sel

Britain Owes No Apology for the Sins of Two Centuries Ago There is something profoundly troubling about a British Prime Minister contemplating an apology on behalf of his country for events that took place two centuries ago. Andy Burnham says he is open to formally apologising for Britain's involvement in the transatlantic slave trade. He also acknowledges that today's British people bear no responsibility for those historical wrongs. Then why is he considering apologising in their name? Slavery was a barbaric institution. Britain participated in it, profited from it and eventually helped bring it to an end. Those facts belong together. Yet Labour seems increasingly comfortable discussing Britain's historical shame while showing far less enthusiasm for defending its achievements. A nation cannot understand its history by examining only the chapters that make it uncomfortable. Slavery existed thousands of years before Britain entered the transatlantic trade. African rulers and merchants supplied captives to European traders. Slavery flourished across the Middle East, North Africa and Asia. Some forms of slavery remain with us today. Yet Britain, which became one of the foremost powers in suppressing the international trade, now finds itself under renewed pressure to apologise. In 1807, Parliament abolished the British slave trade. In 1833, it legislated to abolish slavery across most of the Empire, with full emancipation following in 1838. The Royal Navy subsequently spent decades intercepting slave ships, liberating captives and confronting traders along the African coast. British sailors risked their lives enforcing a principle that much of the world had yet to accept. Abolition also came at an enormous financial cost. Parliament authorised £20 million to compensate slave owners, a vast sum at the time. The formerly enslaved received nothing, an injustice that deserves acknowledgement. Debt associated with that settlement was subsequently consolidated into government borrowing arrangements, with the relevant gilt finally redeemed in 2015. Britain's abolitionist history deserves to be remembered alongside its involvement in slavery. But Burnham's proposed apology raises another question. What exactly would it achieve? Caribbean campaigners have already declared that an apology alone would be insufficient. Their demands extend to debt relief, development funding and other forms of compensation. Burnham rejects reparations while proposing more favourable debt arrangements for poorer Commonwealth countries. He must explain where ordinary development policy ends and historical compensation begins. This is part of a wider failure of confidence in Britain's political leadership. Labour ministers appear more comfortable revisiting the country's historical failings than defending its inheritance. National pride is too often treated as something requiring explanation, qualification or apology. Meanwhile, the country faces mounting pressures on public services, living standards, housing and national security. The British people alive today neither owned the plantations nor authorised the slave ships. They inherited a country whose history contains cruelty and courage, exploitation and reform. They have every reason to learn that history honestly, without being expected to assume personal guilt for the conduct of distant generations. Burnham says today's Britons cannot be held liable for historical wrongs. He should stand by that principle and explain why a formal apology is necessary. Britain's past requires honesty, perspective and moral seriousness. It does not require an endless procession of national apologies. A Prime Minister's duty is to represent the British people of today, not burden them with the guilt of centuries past.

Are BBC Licence Fee Payers Funding the Government's Immigration Policy? On Thursday 29 October, the Government opened applications for a refugee sponsorship scheme, allowing approved organisations to help bring refugees to Britain. The following evening, the BBC broadcast the final of The Celebrity Traitors. Two contestants emerged victorious, each winning £41,500 for their chosen charities. Sebastian Croft selected Choose Love. Romesh Ranganathan chose the Refugee Council. Both support refugees. One already has a formal role in a government-backed resettlement programme. The timing raises questions. The first concerns the money. Who provided the £83,000 awarded to these charities? Was it drawn from the BBC's programme budget, funded by production company Studio Lambert, or supplied through another arrangement? If licence fee revenue contributed, viewers are entitled to know. The BBC has obligations to account for how its money is spent. Charitable donations may be worthwhile, but the source of the funds and the arrangements governing their distribution should be transparent. The second question concerns the charities. The Refugee Council serves as a principal sponsor under the Government's Communities for Afghans programme, working with Action Foundation on resettlement. Choose Love provides humanitarian assistance to displaced people internationally. Neither has yet been confirmed as an accredited sponsor under the new scheme. Will either apply? Has either discussed participation with the Home Office? And were the BBC's producers aware of the Refugee Council's existing government role when the contestants' choices were approved? Then there is the timing. The programme was filmed months before the Government opened applications, and the charity choices preceded the broadcast. Those facts matter. They make suggestions that the outcome was arranged to coincide with Thursday's announcement difficult to sustain. Nevertheless, the proximity warrants a question. Was there any communication between the BBC, Studio Lambert, the Home Office or the charities about the announcement or broadcast date? If there was none, all parties should have little difficulty saying so. These questions arise amid wider concerns about the BBC's relationship with Whitehall. Recent disclosures revealed that serving civil servants, paid by government departments, had been seconded into BBC newsrooms, helping prepare coverage of migration, crime, elections and other contentious subjects. The BBC insists its journalists retained editorial control. Yet some officials' contributions appeared without their civil service positions being sufficiently clear. Public confidence depends on knowing where government involvement begins and ends. The BBC also faces questions about compulsory funding. Ministers are considering extending the licence fee obligation to households using streaming services, including those who never watch BBC programmes. The corporation should therefore demonstrate that its editorial decisions and charitable arrangements remain independent of government policy. Viewers should be able to distinguish a contestant's personal charity choice from any institutional endorsement by the broadcaster. There may be straightforward explanations for the prize funding, charity selections and timing. The evidence does not establish coordination or improper use of licence fee money. But transparency should be expected of a publicly funded broadcaster. Who paid the prize money? When were the charities chosen? What contact, if any, took place with government officials? And can the BBC show that licence fee payers are funding independent entertainment rather than, directly or indirectly, the promotion of government policy? Those are questions the BBC should answer. "The first concerns the money. Who provided the £83,000. [...]. If licence fee revenue contributed, viewers are entitled to know."

Thatcher gave council tenants the right to own their homes. Blair and Brown then had 13 years to build replacements. They failed. Funny how Labour's history of council housing always seems to skip the years when @UKLabour was actually in charge.

Healey Promised Breathing Space. The IFS Says He Delivered A Lost Decade John Healey's Budget came with a slogan, "breathing space now, fresh hope for the future." Judge it by the Chancellor's own measures. The IFS calculates that the package saves the average family £140 by next July. Over the same period, energy and fuel costs are expected to rise by £400. Subtract one from the other and £260 still lands on the household budget. Relief that covers a third of the bill is a discount on the damage. The slogan promised hope. The projection delivers a lost decade. Disposable income for the typical family will grow by about 2 per cent across the 2020s, the weakest of any decade since comparable records began in the 1950s. By 2029, families will have barely more spending power than in 2019. Helen Miller, the IFS director, says no temporary cost of living package can fix that, and the Budget offered nothing else. A VAT cut on electricity and £100 for council tax bands A to D were never going to bend a trend line a decade long. Then there is the headroom. Healey told the Commons he had left £15bn of room against his fiscal rules in 2029/30. The same IFS review identifies a £28bn hole in his spending plans, which would require deep cuts to some departments, cuts Miller doubts this government will make. A margin of safety that depends on reductions nobody expects to be delivered is not a margin. Britain has heard this arithmetic before, from his predecessor, and it did not survive contact with the forecasts. The £14bn rise in debt interest this year shows how quickly it can move. Kemi Badenoch had the measure of it in the chamber, dismissing the package as "4p off gherkins." Businesses were less theatrical and no more generous. Lord Cruddas of CMC Markets called the Budget "pretty useless" against rising bond yields. The Resolution Foundation, hardly a Conservative outpost, found it small beside the scale of the challenge. None of them described a Chancellor confronting the country's central problem, which is an economy that does not grow fast enough to pay for what the state promises. That failure belongs to Andy Burnham as much as to his Chancellor. He took office pledging to ease the squeeze on family finances. His first Budget leaves families facing a lost decade, pushes the hard choices beyond the next election, and bets the public finances on forecasts improving in time. Gilt investors, who have watched this approach before, will price the bet accordingly. Two questions need answering from Downing Street. Which departments will absorb the £28bn of cuts the plans imply, and will the Prime Minister name them before the next election? And if a family is still £260 worse off this winter after the Budget's help, what was the breathing space for? Andy Burnham and John Healey. One promised economic renewal, the other promised breathing space. Britain's families are still waiting for either.

The Chancellor's approach to beer is remarkably similar to his approach to the economy. Sink it in record time.