Contrition on the Cheap

Britain's colonial wrongdoings in Kenya were not quite abhorrent and unjustifiable enough to merit an apology, according to an improving royal speech to the natives. A decade ago, in a legal case brought by over five thousand Kenyans, the UK settled out of court for ministerial lunch-money and a doubtless heartfelt "statement of regret," and His Majesty's Government evidently intends to maintain this economically viable stance of reconciliation. The concentration camp régime which Britain imposed during the rebellion of the nineteen-fifties was so firm in its moral guidance that parallels with the recently-defeated Nazis and the recently-othered Stalinists were evident even to the colony's attorney general; and with a magnificent access of moral Britishness the same attorney general went on to draft legislation that permitted beatings provided they were carried out with due discretion. A full and formal apology would risk implying that the heirs of Empire have made some sort of progress in the past seventy years; which would be a hypocrisy too hilariously blatant even for His Majesty's Establishment.