As the trees lose their leaves and we begin thinking about Christmas, our minds inevitably turn to what we’re going to get for the Commonwealth family. And, despite Sir Keir saying Diego Garcia was a good enough gift, we’re hoping that the Foreign Secretary, David Lammy, is feeling a bit more generous with our money. All of the contenders hoping to lead the Commonwealth believe the UK should be paying reparations for slavery — and as a backbencher Lammy made this argument too. So, since we’re on the brink of righting a historic wrong, it seems prudent to figure out, once and for all, what the figure is.

You’ll be pleased to know that reparations are an exact science, and so I am proud to present The Critic’s Extremely Factual Guide to Slavery Reparations the UK Most Definitely Owes. It’s not a job I undertake lightly — the previous suggestions have varied wildly from “ouch” to “we need to sell Wales”.  Reverend Dr Michael Banner, the Dean of Trinity College Cambridge, says it’s £205 billion. Mia Mottley, the prime minister of Barbados, says £3.9 trillion, and a report by the University of the West Indies says the figure is actually £18.6 trillion. Some pesky types suggest the debt has been paid because the British government borrowed £20 million in 1833 to compensate slave owners and 17,000 British sailors died of disease in the fight against slavery. But to that I say, pish!, that isn’t going to help plug this brand new moral black hole in the budget that we’ve just discovered. So let’s get calculating.

First, we can discount any suggestions by white people. Sorry Rev Banner, that rules out your miserly £205 billion. Then, we need to look at all of the demands by global majority chancers leaders and add them together. Averages are a product of white mathematics which deny the lived experience of people like me who can’t do maths, so adding is more appropriate. Combining all the reparation requests out there gives us the figure of £72.55 trillion. So far so simple. 

Then, I did a Google search for “UK Slavery reparations” and there were 169,249 results. I added that number to my total for good measure. But then I turned to a different way of knowing. I asked the sons and daughters of the aggrieved by email how much they feel they are owed. Was £72.56 trillion enough to make them feel better? Or would, say, £80 trillion be more appropriate? After consultation, it turns out £82.81 trillion was the exact right amount needed to feel quite a bit better, although, of course that figure will only soothe the current generation. It turns out grievance is almost easier to pass down to your children than original sin, so this payment will need to be renewed every twenty years so that each generation of former slaves can always feel like former slaves better. 

Happy pronoun day!
I didn’t even know there was a University of South Wales, (but you didn’t even know trans people existed until 5 years ago, so who’s the real bigot?). Anyway, I was really impressed by a tweet the respected educational institution used to promote International Pronouns Day with a non-patronising “Simple guide to pronouns and how to address pronouns correctly”. It follows hot on the heels of October 11, “Coming Out Day” which we’re all still giddy from celebrating. USW confidently tells us that “Pronouns are the words that people use to refer to themselves, such as “he / him, she / her, they / them, or ze / zir”. I thought pronouns were about forcing other people to go along with your delusion gender, I didn’t realise that people actually referred to themselves as “he”, but he will do it for the rest of this column to help educate you too. Sadly some people wrote mean things in the replies, like keyboard-warrior “Kevin” (if that really is his name) who said “If someone introduces themselves with their pronouns I will immediately assume they are retarded”. We should all be grateful for the “hide reply” function, which the University of South Wales used remorselessly to remove all the hate. Sometimes to be inclusive, you have to exclude. 

When in Rome
The BBC has often described Giorgia Meloni as “Italy’s far right prime minister Giorgia Meloni”, but when Sir Keir met her, she suddenly became “Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni”. What a healing touch he has! Now that she’s been rehabilitated, perhaps our PM can have the same effect on a failed migrant solution? The Tory Rwanda plan was obviously monstrous — taking people who’ve survived the horrors of France and shipping them off to some far-flung third-world country? Dreadful! But what if it’s Keir in charge? And instead of Rwanda, it’s Albania? Suddenly, it’s no longer a heartless deportation scheme; it’s a compassionate Mediterranean retreat. Of course, I don’t want anybody deported from Britain at all, and if I was PM, I’d ship vast numbers of people from Africa to Britain whether they liked it or not. But we’ve got to work with what we’ve got, and if Sir Keir is now looking at Italy’s proposed Albania scheme, then it would at least be a Pan-European solution. That makes it a bit less racist right?