As well as wrapping himself in the Union Jack and cutting back on the pensioners’ winter fuel allowance and benefits for disabled people, in order to spend more on the armed forces, Starmer has further embellished his patriotic and imperialist credentials by  declaring that the British Empire  was “ a force for good in the world”.

Is he really so abysmally ignorant of history?

Particularly during the Georgian period, 1714 to 1830, the Empire was built on slavery.

Was slavery a good thing? It was certainly good for the slave-owners, who became extremely rich by exploiting the unpaid labour of millions of enslaved men, women and children, mainly from the continent of Africa.

This is the origin of the richly furnished stately homes that adorn our countryside.

Is this antic historical revisionism his government’s pre-emptive attempt to stave off claims for reparations for the countries that suffered under the British yoke?

In 1943, when Britain still governed India, a famine in Bengal resulted in 4 million deaths. Britain would not divert food to Bengal at the expense of the war effort. Was that a good thing?

Was it good for the Kenyan farmers who were expelled from the most fertile territory in order to make way for British settlers? That dispossession led to an uprising in which 10,000 native Kenyans were killed between 1950 and 1960?  Another good thing?

In colonising Africa, Britain and other European nations destroyed  sovereign states and cultures which had lasted for hundreds of years. The bloody legacy of that disruption is there for all to see.

When Britain eventually conceded Indian independence in 1947, against the wish of Mahatma Ghandhi, the independence leader, the country was partitioned along religious lines, resulting in the biggest displacement of people in human history and turbulence which cost 3 million lives at the time and leaves a toxic legacy to this day. Has that been a good thing?