The History Boy

Those Labour Peers who yesterday raised concerns that the History curriculum was to be re-written by Niall Ferguson and Andrew Roberts were missing the point when they complained of "neo-Imperialism". Roberts, at least, holds and propagates a truly bizarre position in which the British Empire is declared identical with what, since the Irish Free State and the Union of South Africa were both created by Acts of Parliament before availing themselves of their rights under the Statute of Westminster, is one of only two fundamentally anti-British countries ever created.

For Roberts denies any distinction between the British Empire and the United States, which would certainly come as news to Americans. He therefore sees global American hegemony as the British national interest, which should certainly come as news to Britons, but sadly would not to a very great many. He propagates the Churchillian myth of "the English-speaking peoples", devised to justify the loss of British prestige as part of the price of American entry into the War in Europe.

He also puts about the fantasies of Margaret Thatcher's Euroscepticism, Unionism, moral and social conservatism, educational traditionalism, and concern both for British sovereignty over the Falkland Islands and for the necessary capacity on the part of the Royal Navy. Somewhat incongruously for a fan of the British Empire, but entirely in keeping with his support for Thatcher, he campaigns, through the Springbok Club, for the restoration of apartheid South Africa. His books are greatly admired by that noted polymath, George W Bush.

We have been warned.