William Hague - My Fake Diary

Thursday, 6 September 2012

Owen wrote in the Independent:

Remember all that national soul-searching and self-flagellation over Empire and all the horrors committed in its name? No, me neither. But this is the fictional Britain that has been conjured up by our Foreign Secretary, William Hague. "We have to get out of this post-colonial guilt," he declared in Friday's Evening Standard. "Be confident in ourselves."

Here is an echo of Gordon Brown's assertion in 2005 that "the days of Britain having to apologise for its colonial history are over". It was a straw man argument, because there has never been an apology for British imperialism. The British Empire has been virtually erased by collective amnesia; like an embarrassing, sordid secret that should never be mentioned in polite company. A foreign country such as Turkey can rightly be berated for failing to come to terms with an atrocity like the Armenian genocide, but the darkest moments of our own history are intentionally forgotten.

He's right you know...