Kemi Badenoch: War on woke veers into apologia for colonialism

Yes, Minister: Slavery did fuel the rise of British capitalism

And the Bank of England is just one British institution that agrees…

Paul Mason
9 min readApr 20, 2024

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Kemi Badenoch took time out of her job as trade minister to clam, last week, that the “wealth and success of the UK” is not “down to colonialism or white imperialism or privilege or whatever”.

I agree. It is also due to the exploitation of millions of mainly white, working class people in this country, for the past 250 years, including all my ancestors. And of course to the ingenuity and inventiveness of generations of scientists and entrepeneurs.

But let’s be clear: the reason the Tories keep trying to provoke progressive people into arguments over Britain’s history of colonialism and racism is to divide us.

What they want, through their “war on woke”, is to assemble a coalition of everybody who feels threatened by anti-racism; men who feel threatened by feminism; Brits who feel threatened by refugees; motorists who feel threatened by Net Zero targets; and bigots who feel threatened by trans rights.

The reason they have to do this is they have nothing to offer such people economically — no plan to grow the economy, no plan to cut energy bills, no plan to save the NHS; no plan to fight crime. So getting us to argue about the…

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Paul Mason

Journalist, writer and film-maker. Author of How To Stop Fascism.