Oh, how the mighty have fallen—or rather, how they’ve been nagged into submission by a chorus of sanctimonious academics, guilt-ridden politicians, and activists who wouldn’t know a railway from a rutted cart track. The British Empire, that sprawling, tea-stained behemoth, is now the whipping boy of history, its legacy reduced to a litany of apologies by those who’d rather grovel than govern. Yet, let us pause, dear reader, and raise a wry eyebrow at this self-flagellation. For beneath the tarnish of time, the Empire—and its modern offspring, the Commonwealth—offers a legacy of liberty and prosperity that makes the European Union’s bureaucratic quagmire look like a particularly dull episode of a daytime soap opera. Allow me to don my historian’s cap, tilt it at a jaunty angle, and argue the case with the dry sardonic wit that history so richly deserves.
First, let’s dispense with the notion that the Empire was a mere exercise in exploitation, a Victorian smash-and-grab operation conducted with pith helmets and bad manners. Nonsense! The British didn’t just colonise; they constructed—roads, bridges, railways, schools, hospitals, and parliaments, all delivered with the efficiency of a well-run tea plantation. India’s rail network, stretching over 40,000 kilometres by 1947, wasn’t built by magic; it was the work of British engineers who, admittedly, might have been more interested in moving tea than people, but still, a marvel nonetheless. Compare that to the EU, where the grandest achievement seems to be a mountain of regulations thicker than a Dickens novel, dictating the curvature of bananas with the zeal of a medieval scribe. The Empire gave the world infrastructure; the EU gives us form-filling freedom.
And then there’s the small matter of slavery. Yes, the Empire traded in human misery for centuries—some 3.1 million Africans shipped across the Atlantic between 1660 and 1807, per the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database—but let’s not dwell on the inconvenient past when we can celebrate the 1833 abolition that freed 800,000 souls. The British didn’t just outlaw slavery; they sent gunboats to enforce it, a naval morality play that left other nations blushing. The EU, by contrast, has yet to abolish anything more oppressive than a tax loophole, preferring to regulate its citizens into submission with directives that read like a Kafkaesque nightmare. Freedom, it seems, was an Empire export; conformity is the EU’s brand.
Consider the Commonwealth, that loose confederation of former colonies now united by cricket, Commonwealth Games, and a shared fondness for British understatement. From Canada’s orderly backbone to Singapore’s gleaming prosperity, these nations owe their stability to the tools of governance—law, language, medicine—left behind by the Union Jack. Hong Kong’s legal system, a beacon of justice until Beijing’s recent meddling, stands as a testament to this legacy. The EU, meanwhile, offers a different gift: a single market where prosperity is measured in subsidies and sovereignty is traded for a Brussels bureaucrat’s nod. Mozambique and Rwanda, latecomers to the Commonwealth with no colonial ties, joined in 1995 and 2009, respectively, drawn by the promise of trade and friendship rather than a rulebook thicker than the Magna Carta. The Commonwealth thrives on voluntary association; the EU demands allegiance like a jealous spouse.
The Empire’s critics, those reparation-mongers and statue-topplers, would have us believe it was all plunder and shame—Trafalgar, Victoria, Rhodes, and Churchill reduced to villains in a morality tale. But let’s be frank: the world owes Britain a thank-you note, not a bill. The abolition of piracy, the suppression of ritual killings, the establishment of universities in Africa—these were not the acts of a marauding horde but of a civilisation playing lighthouse in a dark sea. The EU, by contrast, plays traffic cop, its bureaucrats issuing fines for misplaced apostrophes while member states groan under the weight of its “polycentric” governance—a term that sounds like a polite way of saying “nobody’s in charge.” The Empire built nations; the EU builds committees.
Today, as Britain navigates a post-Brexit world, the contrast sharpens. The Commonwealth offers a network of 56 nations, many enjoying duty-free access to each other’s markets—14 least-developed countries benefit from the EU’s “Everything but Arms” arrangement, a nod to Empire’s pro-development roots. The EU, meanwhile, clings to its CETA agreements and trade talks with Australia and New Zealand, achievements dwarfed by the Commonwealth’s organic growth. Keir Starmer’s recent pledge to boost defense spending to 5% of GDP by 2035 signals a return to national pride, a quiet rebuttal to the EU’s bureaucratic embrace. The Empire’s confidence built the modern world; the EU’s conformity risks unmaking it.
So, next time a sneering Marxist or a Labour MP with a tear-stained manifesto lectures you on the “crimes of Empire,” fix them with a steely gaze and say, “You’re only free to whinge because Britain built a world where you could.” The Commonwealth carries that torch forward, a voluntary union of prosperity and freedom, while the EU drowns in its own paperwork. No apologies needed—just a nod to history’s better jokes. And if the reparation mob persists, we might remind them that the Empire’s greatest legacy is the liberty to argue about it. Cheers to that.