BORIS JOHNSON: China emerges unscathed from Covid, but we face bizarre demands for slavery reparations as Starmer's foreign policy is about as robust as a tea-soaked hobnob .

Today I want us to examine two great crimes against humanity. Each of them condemned millions of people to horrible deaths. Each of them deprived entire populations of their freedom by brutally incarcerating men, women and children; and, in both cases, lives and hopes were shattered across the planet.

In both cases, or so it can be argued, there was a major world power that was primarily responsible for the catastrophe. The two great evils I can think of are the slave trade and Covid-19, and the nations held responsible are the UK and China respectively.

Let us place these two cases side by side. Compare the relative vigor and indignation with which they are now being prosecuted in the court of world public opinion.

It is astonishing, and instructive, to note the difference in political temperature: one subject provoking tearful anger among liberals around the world, the other hushed in studious silence. Look at the double standards applied to these controversies, because this stinking hypocrisy tells us a lot about today's geopolitics and the exaggerated weakness of the current British government.

The case against Britain for slavery is weak, to the point of absurdity. The arguments against China, in favor of Covid, seem more and more overwhelming. And yet, it is Great Britain that is today being asked to pay 18,000 billion in reparations for the slave trade.

We are still being asked to accept that this horrible disease started in a wet market in Wuhan. Really? Do you believe it? When this very city houses a laboratory where scientists were busy manipulating the genetic material of the Sars-Covid viruses?

How much are we asking the Chinese to compensate for the trillions in economic damage caused by Covid? Zero, nada, zilch. What is happening?

Britain was not the originator of the slave trade. Slavery has been a part of every historical culture we can observe, as well as many modern cultures. The ancient Britons were themselves enslaved by many people, including the Romans. There is a famous relief of Aphrodisias, depicting Britannia brutally subjugated by Claudius.

Should we sue Signora Meloni for reparations from modern Italians? We were not responsible for the slavery that was endemic for centuries in Africa, from Senegal to Nigeria, starting in the Middle Ages. It was not the Europeans, much less the British, who enslaved a third of the population, some to serve in households, others forced to harvest crops, others to become soldiers.

It was the Africans themselves. It wasn't even the British or Europeans who invented the horrible practice of transporting these slaves to other markets: it was the Mesopotamians, the Greeks, the Romans, the Arabs. It was just about everyone taking part in the long march toward man's inhumanity to man, and while the British undoubtedly played their part, they were relative newcomers.

Come to think of it, my own great-great-grandmother was a Circassian slave. It is said that my Ottoman great-great-grandfather bought it at a market. I'm afraid that's how they did things back then.

Is anyone seriously suggesting that his descendants, including the current author, should seek redress from Tayyip Erdogan's government in Ankara? This is all nonsense.

The only thing more ridiculous than demanding compensation from modern Turkey, for my great-great-grandmother's slavery, is the idea of ​​asking modern Britain to compensate the nations of the earth for our role in the slave trade.

The Chinese, frankly, are making it clear that they will not put up with any nonsense from anyone, while the Starmer government is being tragic and destructive.

We did not start slavery; in fact, we are the country that has done more than any other to abolish it. I was in Brazil not long ago, and the curator of one of the major museums in Sao Paulo gratefully reminded me that Brazil was the last country in South America to abolish slavery, in 1888, largely thanks to the Royal Navy.

There is no one in this country today who bears any moral responsibility for the transatlantic or any other slave trade. None of us were involved, none of us decided to invest in slavery or in businesses using slaves. So, what's happening at this Commonwealth summit in Samoa? Why are our friends suddenly claiming that the British taxpayer must pay trillions when neither the British government nor any of these taxpayers have any culpability?

The demands for reparations are all the more astonishing and nauseating if we compare Chinese guilt with regard to Covid.

In this case, of course, there are certainly people alive in China who know what happened and who should be prosecuted, and yet the world simply refuses to address the subject. Five years after the Covid tragedy began, we are still being asked to accept that this horrible disease began in a Wuhan wet market following a romance between a nearsighted pangolin and a bat, or another natural zoogenesis.

Really? Do you believe it? When this very city of Wuhan happens to be the headquarters of a laboratory where scientists were busy manipulating the genetic material of Sars-Covid viruses in order to obtain a gain of function or make them more contagious?

It was an accident, no doubt; a terrible and tragic accident for China and the world. But ultimately it was the Chinese who let this vile virus out of the test tube and there is a general principle that those responsible for a terrible medical disaster (think Bhopal, think Thalidomide) must pay accountability. accounts. So why aren’t we hearing anything about the possibility of global reparations for Covid?

Why this conspiracy of silence on Covid and this bizarre demand for slavery reparations from the UK?

We are confronted, first of all, with the extreme reluctance of scientists, in general, to attribute responsibility for a disaster to other scientists. Scientists fear (often rightly) that human superstition prevents them from pushing the frontiers of knowledge. Moreover, many of them are financed by the Chinese and do not find it practical to point fingers at Beijing.

The same argument could be made about many Commonwealth countries, whether in the Caribbean, Africa or the Pacific, which now complain about the UK's role in slavery. Look at their debts to China. There is a natural reluctance, when you are heavily in financial debt, to worry too much about the origins of Covid and thus embarrass your Chinese lenders.

When it comes to bashing Britain, of course, no such inhibition applies and here, my friends, we come to the fundamental explanation of double standards.

It all depends on the position of the two governments in the dock. The Chinese, frankly, are making it clear that they will not accept any nonsense from anyone, while the Starmer government is tragically and destructive.

Why are our Commonwealth friends suddenly chattering about slavery reparations, something that never seemed to come up in my day? Because they saw the Starmer pathetically hand over the Chagos Islands, and they think they can now get away with it.

The Chinese government tirelessly defends what it considers to be its national interest; The current Labor government, I fear, is doing the opposite. Starmer's foreign policy is about as robust as a tea-soaked Hobnob.

This is why the British taxpayer is now faced with an indefinite and ridiculous clamor to spit slavery, while the Chinese Covid perpetrators get away scot-free.