We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
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Britain did not benefit from (slave) labour anyway. We did not then have a state controlled economy, we do not now have a state controlled economy. Britain didn’t own the slaves so it’s not Britain that – even if you can prove that there should be reparations – which should pay for owning the slaves it didn’t.
This does then rather leave the reparations argument being that Barbados – or whoever – needs to go around suing, individually, the estates of those who owned slaves. Good luck with that one.
– Tim Worstall
With the small proviso that in more than a few ways, the UK does indeed now have a fairly state controlled economy, I agree with Tim as usual.
“Global calls for reparations are only growing louder. Why is Britain still digging in its heels?”, asks Hilary Beckles, the chair of the Caribbean Reparations Commission.
The original version of this post said, “The answer is that even Sir Keir Starmer, the man who suffered the swiftest fall in popularity of any incoming British prime minister since polling began, has enough minimal awareness of political reality not to touch this one.” Then I saw an update to the Guardian‘s daily politics liveblog. It said, “Starmer ‘open to discussing non-cash forms of reparatory justice for slavery'”. Wow. This is like a man on a life-raft being open to discussing non-meat based forms of food justice with the circling sharks.
The BBC has up a story that currently has the headline “Commonwealth leaders to defy UK on slavery reparations”. The BBC’s original headline, under which it was posted to the /r/ukpolitics subreddit, was “Commonwealth heads of government to defy UK on reparatory justice”. The UKpolitics subreddit leans strongly left, but the most-recommended comment was this one by redditor LycanIndarys:
“A report published last year by the University of West Indies – backed by Patrick Robinson, a judge who sits on the International Court of Justice – concluded the UK owed more than £18tn in reparations for its role in slavery in 14 Caribbean countries.”
OK, so just as a rough guide to get your head around that sort of figure, total annual UK government spending is about £1.2tn. So if we scrapped every single thing that the UK government does, and devoted all government spending to paying these reparations, then it would still take 16 years to pay. And of course, the UK would collapse in the mean-time, because we would have no health-service, no military, no roads, no benefits, no education, etc.
Or if we would instead put it on our national debt, then we’d be looking at a significant increase from our current debt of £2.3tn. Effectively increasing our debt by a factor of 8. I assume the repayments on that would also cripple us, but I’ll admit I haven’t calculated the figures.
Put aside any morality on this, or thoughts about why some people seem to think that trans-Atlantic slavery is the only crime ever committed (a suspiciously American outlook), and look at this in pure political terms. Any government that agreed to pay those reparations would lose in a landslide to another party that had “stop giving money to the freeloading bastards” as line one in their manifesto, wouldn’t they?
You know how people always complain about Foreign Aid, because they don’t see the benefit on sending UK taxpayer money abroad? Well imagine the reaction to that, but about a sum of money literally a thousand times bigger.
One detail that perhaps got lost in the recent UK decision about the Indian Ocean group of islands containing Diego Garcia – taken very fast and over the heads of the Chagos Islands locals (which hardly fits with ideas about decolonisation) – was that President Biden applauded the move. In way this isn’t surprising. Pr. Biden doesn’t particularly like the UK, and like a certain kind of American politician, has a grudge about the old, post-imperial network of relationships and territories that the UK has, or had, around the world. More fool him.
In this transfer and lease deal (which is not, as far as I know, formally signed and there has been no formal debate or legislation about this in Parliament) the UK is transferring taxpayers money in a payment programme to a tax haven (Mauritius). If the Tories had done this, the tax haven angle would have been constantly mentioned.
It seems ironic that Labour, a party not exactly known for its love of tax havens (unless Tony Blair uses one) or such international conduits, feels it is okay to deal with Mauritius financially in this way. Don’t get me wrong, I am for tax havens, and the more of them the better, because they deter otherwise high-tax governments from going crazy when capital is mobile, although as UK finance minister Rachel Reeves is proving, that’s not a solid protection. Tax hikes are likely in the 30 October UK budget. People are leaving.
Biden’s support for what’s happened should give pause, given what a poor President he is on foreign affairs, in my view. Also, he hasn’t made much disguise of his distaste for Brexit and the UK’s independence out of the bloc, and neither did Barack Obama. There’s no enthusiasm from that quarter for the UK to engage in new trade and other deals with countries outside the EU. And Biden’s own recent judgement about foreign affairs is spotty at best: half-decent on Israel and Ukraine, and shockingly inept over Afghanistan, with the rushed departure and loss of billions of dollars of equipment.
Those on the Republican side are, apparently, far less happy about the Chagos islands deal, and the potential risk to security of the Diego Garcia airbase jointly used by the UK and US. They know how porous leasehold deals can be, and have seen that Mauritius has used all legal pressure to change the terms of its independence settlement with the UK of 1968. The US Air Force has used the base in recent conflicts; if it wanted to bomb Iranian nuclear facilities, for example, and do so via Diego Garcia, the situation becomes dicier than it might have been. One has to wonder about the role of China in all this (Chinese money flows through Mauritius.)
This whole saga also shows that if the UK is to pursue a more “blue water” foreign policy in future as it expands trade links with countries outside Europe, particular in Asia, that getting its defence arrangements locked down is essential. And we need to lose our illusions about how special our relationship with the US really is at times.
Daniel Hannan has this excellent overview of just what a shockingly poor transaction the UK has made with Mauritius. Hannan argues that Mauritius has never exercised sovereignty over the islands, a fact that is so shocking it is hard to argue how on earth we reached this point and how the Mauritius government thought it could bully its way ahead on this. However, a future, different UK government should certainly revisit the terms of this deal, and press hard on Mauritius if, for example, that country’s anti-money laundering standards are questioned in future. Time for a bit of nastiness behind the smiles.
It may be too late now to change course on this specific, shabby deal, at least under the current Starmer government. I fear it is. And now there’s speculation about what happens to the Falkland Islands and Gibraltar. The UK has shown itself to be weak. People tend to notice.
The foreign ministers of Australia, Japan, India and the US issued a joint statement after the massacre, saying ‘We underscore the need to prevent the conflict from escalating’. Likewise, Britain’s foreign secretary, David Lammy, has said ‘we are deeply concerned about the risk of further escalation’. These are warnings to Israel, aren’t they? These powerhouses of Western diplomacy, with their noisy teeth-gnashing over ‘escalation’, are essentially telling Israel to chill out. Indeed, one US security analyst told the Guardian that ‘the most pressing task for US officials’ is to ‘delay any Israeli retaliation’ in order that we might ‘achieve de-escalation’. Relax, Israel – it’s only 12 kids.
– Brendan O’Neill
We rarely comment on current affairs here, but the V-P has made an address to the Nation.
So we are in for a hot summer.
“Israel placed fifth this year, due to low support in the jury voting. But it came second to Croatia in the popular vote. Though Ireland’s entrant, a “nonbinary” satanist named Bambie Thug, had called for Israel’s expulsion, Irish voters put Israel in second place. Israel topped the popular vote in Britain, Spain, Germany, France, Finland, Sweden, Holland, Belgium, Switzerland, Portugal and Italy. Europeans may struggle to tell good tunes from bad, but they know the difference between good and evil.”
– Dominic Green, Wall Street Journal ($)
For more coverage on the rather satisfying result of this admittedly silly competition, see here.
Particularly troubling are the provisions that commit WHO member states to developing behavioural-science measures (a euphemism for ‘nudge’ tactics and propaganda) and countering ‘misinformation and disinformation’ (meaning increased censorship). Given the extent of state-led propaganda and censorship during the last pandemic, would it not be more appropriate to strengthen protections for scientific debate and free speech instead?
– Molly Kingsley
A suggestion I have heard, made almost in jest but it might be true, was that Iran launching more than three hundred drones and missiles at Israel might have been intended as some weird form of de-escalation. The reasoning behind this theory is Iran knew perfectly well that the main effect of its attack would be to demonstrate just how good Israel’s air defences are, but that the expensive gesture would satisfy their own hawks without giving Israel any emotional reason to strike back.
I read somewhere that in nineteenth-century France most professional men could expect to be challenged to a duel at some time in their career. To refuse meant dishonour. To accept meant the prospect of death or serious injury, or the lesser but still significant unpleasantness of inflicting it on someone else. To deal with this problem the custom arose that by silent mutual agreement the splendid-looking duelling pistols used would have been made in very small calibres and taking only a tiny amount of black powder. When fired they produced a reasonable bang which carried with it enough prospect of doing harm to satisfy the honour of the duellists – but in practice wearing a thick woollen overcoat was usually enough to deflect the slow-moving ball.
Perhaps Iran was, or thought it was, acting like one of those duellists. If so, we shall have to see whether Israel is on board with the “silent mutual agreement” part of the analogy.
What do you think?
The result is that American public debate has shifted in a way that has taken America’s allies – and many Americans themselves – by surprise. The public takes peace for granted. “To some extent we are paying the price for our own success. In several generations now we have not had to deal with certain types of situations, or only very narrow slices of generations have had to deal with them since we’ve eliminated the draft. And so increasingly America is just in a very different place psychologically,” says Dr Haass.
In other words, Trumpism will not die with Trump, argues Mr Arnold, and betting British security on 300,000 swing voters every four years is not a viable long term policy.
“Trump is unpredictable. As military people say, hope cannot be part of the strategy. We have to understand there is a risk and we need to be ready for this risk,” says Mr Zagorodnyuk.
“And as such we need to understand what we are going to do to be self-sufficient. And it is actually possible. It is difficult but it is possible, especially with this massive technical transformation of the landscape of the world.”
– Roland Oliphant
Hidden deep below the headquarters of the United Nations’ aid agency for Palestinians here is a Hamas complex with rows of computer servers that Israel’s armed forces say served as an important communications center and intelligence hub for the Islamist militant group.
Wall Street Journal. ($)
Part of a warren of tunnels and subterranean chambers carved from the Gaza Strip’s sandy soil, the compound below the United Nations Relief and Works Agency buildings in Gaza City appears to have run on electricity drawn from the U.N.’s power supply, Israeli officials said.
A Wall Street Journal reporter and journalists from other news organizations visited the site this past week in a trip organized by Israel’s military. A tunnel also appeared to pass beneath a U.N.-run school near the headquarters.
The location of a Hamas military installation under important U.N. facilities is evidence, Israeli officials say, of Hamas’s widespread use of sensitive civilian infrastructure as shields to protect its militant activities. Tunnel complexes have also been found near or under some of Gaza’s largest hospitals.
Someone kindly explain to me the utility, at any level, of the United Nations. Take all the time you need.
The reason Beijing seems so relaxed about the crisis is obvious: this is a situation in which China wins either way. Either the threat continues but shipping is safer for Chinese vessels than for others, in which case sailing under the protection of the red and gold flag may become a coveted competitive advantage, or Beijing finally tells Iran to knock it off, in which case China becomes the de facto go-to security provider in the Middle East. Both outcomes would be geopolitical coups. No wonder China is willing to accept a little short-term economic pain as the situation plays out.
– Nathan Levine
Why we can’t leave the Houthi’s to shoot at us in peace is completely beyond me.
– the indispensable Zarah Bukake MP echoing nice Mr. Corbyn.
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