C'mon, let's pull down Churchill's statue

The entire movement that has catapulted Britain out of Europe and Johnson into No. 10 is based upon a painstaking preservation of various absurd myths about British history. The notion that Churchill saved Europe is an unsubtle claim that Europe owes Britain. The idea that Britain, with its vast overseas empire, stood alone in 1940 is an equally unsubtle reminder that it could stand alone today.

Beyond Brexit, the notion of Britishness that Churchill embodies is one that has no place for racial minorities and which, as my colleague Therese Raphael has pointed out, dismisses their justified complaints. Without an honest reckoning with its past, the Britain of 2020 will continue to be adrift in a world with few allies, uncertain of what its own economic advantages are and with an increasingly unclear sense of itself as a modern nation.

This is a Britain whose mind has been poisoned by such myths and, yes, held back by the weight of statues of slavers and imperialists. Johnson said that statues “teach us about our past, with all its faults.” Statues do not teach; schools do.

So, take down such statues — Churchill, of course, but also Clive “of India” on Whitehall and the generals of the British Indian Army in Trafalgar Square. But if we are to leach this poison from the British mind, then it is school curricula that will have to change.