Jacob Rees-Mogg’s defence of the British Empire

Jacob Rees-Mogg was in stirring form this morning, at a Tory party conference event on ‘Restoring prosperity, restoring Conservatism’ hosted by the Legatum Institute. The former minister for Brexit opportunities began his speech – where else? – at 1215 with Magna Carta before embarking on a potted history of English liberties, at one point digressing on the Anglo-Saxon root of the word ‘woman’, and why England is more successful than France (‘If you are an English peasant and you improve your land, who makes the money? You do.’)

But Mr S struck most of all by JRM’s defence of our past. He remarked that: ‘we should rejoice in our history and not be apologetic for it.’ And, he added, ‘We should also be proud of our colonial experience, not least in America’.

He went on: 

‘Our colonial experience – of course, as with anything in human life, it has its mistakes – was one of the greatest civilising, prosperity-creating forces the world has ever seen.