What Kemi Badenoch gets right about colonialism

Kemi Badenoch has developed a habit of truth telling. This is risky in our climate of rigid cultural orthodoxy, for whose guardians ‘Truth is what you and people like you believe, and can compel others to accept,’ as the philosopher John Gray puts it. Those who tell truths that ‘you and people like you’ deny become targets.

Ms Badenoch’s most recent foray into robust common sense occurred in a speech in the City, in which she said, among other things, that the changes that followed the Glorious Revolution of 1688, including the rule of law, led to a great expansion in financial services. She rejected the new orthodoxy that Britain’s ‘wealth and success’ were due to ‘colonialism’, ‘white imperialism’, ‘exploitation’ and ‘oppression.’

The historian William Dalrymple tweeted that Badenoch ‘needs to learn some history’.  This sort of put-down sounds bad from a professional: to me, it translates as ‘I’m an expert: you keep quiet.