TORY leadership contender Robert Jenrick has claimed Britain’s former colonies should be thankful for the legacy of empire.
The former minister, who is in the final two to take over from Rishi Sunak said countries that were part of the empire “owe us a debt of gratitude for the inheritance we left them” in the form of legal and democratic systems.
Writing in the Daily Mail, Jenrick argued against calls for Britain to compensate the former colonies in the form of reparations.
At a meeting of Commonwealth leaders in Samoa last week, Prime Minister Keir Starmer rejected calls for reparations and a formal apology from the UK Government.
But Jenrick claimed Starmer (below) was “capitulating to those determined to tear our country down”.
He said the reparations debate had “seeped into our national debate through universities overrun by leftists peddling pseudo-Marxist gibberish to impressionable undergraduates”.
Jenrick added: “The territories colonised by our empire were not advanced democracies. Many had been cruel, slave-trading powers. Some had never been independent.
"The British empire broke the long chain of violent tyranny as we came to introduce – gradually and imperfectly – Christian values.”
While acknowledging the “crimes of colonialism”, the MP said that Britain should also be proud of its “achievements” in the empire, which he argued included common law and the Westminster parliamentary model.
He said: “I’m not ashamed of our history. It may not feel like it, but many of our former colonies – amid the complex realities of empire – owe us a debt of gratitude for the inheritance we left them.”
