Prime Minister Andy Burnham will have an unofficial goal when he meets members of Britain’s former empire next week: Avoid a fight about slavery reparations. His predecessor Keir Starmer’s trip to the last Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting, at a beach resort on the Pacific island of Samoa in 2024, is still the stuff of rueful mutters in parts of Whitehall. Lined up in a semi-circle of armchairs — “like an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting,” as one person briefed on the gathering put it — leaders from many of the 56 Commonwealth nations negotiated live over a 16-page communique on laptops and tablets.
Starmer, a barrister, found himself personally redrafting a key paragraph about reparations on a screen surrounded by other leaders, said two further people briefed on the meeting. The unusually intimate format of the leaders’ retreat meant they had no officials with them on the veranda, and Starmer had just one civil servant — No. 10’s private secretary for foreign affairs — stationed in a tent close by. His chief of staff Morgan McSweeney was woken at 4 a.m.
London time by a phone call to talk about the strategy for reparations. That, however, was never clearly resolved. The retreat dragged on hours late; some leaders left before it was even over.
Starmer was frustrated and felt he had been “ambushed,” said one U.K. official involved in the 2024 trip. A second said they had blocked the incident from their memory. A third said Starmer was left “furious,” adding: “He went in blind and it was terrible for him.” A fourth said simply: “It was a disaster.” All were granted anonymity to speak frankly.
The eventual communique agreed on a “conversation towards forging a common future based on equity.” This fudge kicked the issue of reparations down the road — where it now lands in Burnham’s lap. Britain’s new prime minister will touch down at the biennial summit in Antigua and Barbuda next week to find the issue still firmly on some Caribbean and African leaders’ minds. At the United Nations in May, 123 countries passed a motion calling for “inclusive, good-faith dialogue on reparatory justice.” The U.K. abstained.
Barbados PM Mia Mottley announced a manifesto from Caribbean leaders on the “moral, ethical and legal case” for reparations in June. Commonwealth Secretary-General Shirley Botchwey said last week that an apology for Britain’s role in the slave trade “wouldn’t hurt.” The visit will be a test of how Burnham — who has a reputation for speaking off the cuff, especially on issues of moral justice — maintains a delicate U.K. government line that reparations are not “the answer,” as Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband told POLITICO last month. And Burnham will face that challenge in a unique spotlight: It will be his first overseas visit with King Charles III, who is the head of the Commonwealth.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
