Ed Miliband has drawn the line Andy Burnham left open. Asked on BBC Newscast whether the government's willingness to consider a formal apology for the transatlantic slave trade could cost British taxpayers a penny more, the Foreign Secretary said no. Reparations, he said, are not the right answer, not practical, and not feasible. What is on offer is a structured dialogue, words rather than a new bill, and work he says partners have already accepted.
Burnham, speaking to broadcasters on Monday, would not say whether the change of position could mean higher costs. Miliband, in Antigua for the Commonwealth summit, closed that gap on Wednesday morning. He said he had told partners in advance that Britain would be open to an apology and would not shift on reparations. "It's not for us," he said. The 40 million pounds for Caribbean infrastructure, announced with the dialogue, comes from existing budgets. On Miliband's account, that is the money. There is no second cheque.
A year, and a summit in Manchester
The timetable is now public. Ministers expect the dialogue with affected countries to run for about a year. Asked whether a formal apology could be ready when Britain hosts the G20 in Manchester in November 2027, Miliband said: "Broadly speaking, yes." That is not a promise of the wording. It is a promise of a moment. The King used his on Tuesday, and stopped at sorrow. The government is giving itself another twelve months before it decides whether to go further.
Miliband said he had asked for a historical digest of Britain's role. He spoke of more than three million people shipped with the British state's complicity over a couple of centuries, and of hundreds of thousands who died before they arrived. He called previous governments' habit a tendency to sweep the issue under the carpet. He was particularly sharp about Sir Tony Blair, who in 2007 expressed deep sorrow and regret. Miliband called that a "sorry not sorry", sorrow spoken and then walked back by No 10. He said the episode still comes up, including in Burnham's talks with Mia Mottley of Barbados.
What Miliband Committed To
- No extra cost to taxpayers for the new Commonwealth approach.
- No reparations. He called them impractical and not feasible.
- A structured dialogue likely to conclude within about a year.
- A formal apology, "broadly speaking", possible by the G20 in Manchester in November 2027.
- The 40 million pounds for Caribbean infrastructure stays inside existing budgets.
The mess he says he inherited
Miliband also reached back to Samoa. He said that on his second day as Foreign Secretary he was told CHOGM 2024 had ended in a verbal punch-up about the same question, and that the row had been hanging over the Commonwealth for about twenty years. Confronting it, he said, was the way to let the club talk about other things. Partners, on his telling, were bruised by being asked to move on, and relieved that London now wants a shared interest in doing so. Relief is not the same as agreement. Caricom leaders still want more than a form of words.
At home, the politics are the other way round. John Healey has already said people alive now should not carry a cash liability for the trade. Critics of the 40 million pounds call it a lever for reparations by stealth. Miliband's answer is that the lever does not move: the position on payment has not changed, and the apology, if it is made, will not come with a new demand on the Treasury. Whether a dialogue that lasts until late 2027 can stay inside that sentence is the argument he has just picked up, in public, from the Prime Minister.