Unilateral visa bans sit uneasily with a programme to unite Charles’s realms. This starts with the CANZUK four of Australia, Canada, New Zealand and Britain.

Reform is again right and it’s good to see a broadening out of its foreign policy. But we must always remember the big picture when it comes to the Commonwealth Realms.

Reform UK right to take on woke rubbish about British Empire

The British Empire has become one of the most politically contested subjects in modern Britain.

For some, it represents centuries of British influence, trade, exploration, institutions and cultural exchange across the world. For others, it is inseparable from conquest, exploitation, slavery, racial hierarchy and the extraction of wealth from territories under British control.

Reform UK has increasingly positioned itself against what it describes as a negative or “woke” interpretation of British history. The party argues that British children should be taught to understand their country’s achievements and traditions rather than being encouraged to view Britain primarily through the lens of historical guilt.

That argument has gained political attention as the government prepares changes to England’s national curriculum.

But the debate needs an important qualification: Britain’s existing history curriculum already requires pupils to study empire and slavery. The current curriculum specifically includes Britain’s transatlantic slave trade, the development of the British Empire, a depth study such as India, and the end of Empire and Indian independence.

The real disagreement, therefore, is less about whether the British Empire should be taught and more about how it should be taught, what emphasis should be placed on its achievements and abuses, and how historical interpretation should be balanced.

Reform’s argument about British history

Reform UK has built much of its cultural and political messaging around the idea that Britain has become excessively apologetic about its past.

The party’s wider political philosophy places considerable emphasis on national identity, sovereignty, tradition and the idea that institutions should reflect what it regards as the interests of the British public.

That position has increasingly extended into debates about education and historical memory.

The argument is not necessarily that slavery, colonial violence or imperial abuses should be ignored. Rather, Reform politicians have frequently objected to what they regard as an approach in which those subjects dominate discussions of British history while achievements are minimised or presented as morally suspect.

This is part of a wider argument about national confidence.

Supporters of this approach contend that children should learn about Britain’s parliamentary traditions, scientific achievements, industrialisation, military history, literature and contribution to international institutions alongside the darker chapters of the country’s past.

Critics respond that recognising those achievements does not require reducing the historical significance of colonial exploitation.

The dispute is therefore fundamentally about emphasis and interpretation.

What children are already taught

Claims that British schools simply ignore the Empire do not fit the existing national curriculum.

The Department for Education’s statutory history programme requires pupils at Key Stage 3 to study the period “ideas, political power, industry and empire: Britain, 1745-1901”.

Among the examples explicitly listed are Britain’s transatlantic slave trade and its eventual abolition, Britain’s development as the world’s first industrial nation and the development of the British Empire, including a possible depth study of India.

The curriculum also includes Indian independence and the end of Empire within the period covering Britain and the wider world from 1901 to the present.

This is important because schools in England are not operating under a curriculum that simply celebrates imperial Britain.

Nor does the curriculum prescribe one interpretation of the Empire.

Instead, the official aims emphasise historical enquiry, evidence, contrasting interpretations, cause and consequence, continuity and change, and the ability to understand Britain’s history alongside the history of the wider world.

That framework leaves considerable room for teachers and schools to decide how particular subjects are explored.

The government’s planned curriculum changes

The political argument is becoming more significant because England is currently revising its national curriculum following the independent Curriculum and Assessment Review.

In March 2026, the government said that the refreshed curriculum would strengthen pupils’ understanding of British heritage.

The Department for Education specifically stated that this would include a robust understanding of Britain’s national history, alongside British values and English literature. The government said public consultation would take place during 2026, with the new full national curriculum planned for first teaching from September 2028.

That provides an important point of overlap between Reform’s concerns and a broader discussion already taking place within government.

However, the government’s stated approach is not to remove difficult aspects of British history.

It is to combine a stronger understanding of British heritage with a modern and forward-looking view of Britain.

That distinction matters.

Empire cannot be reduced to one story

The British Empire lasted for centuries and encompassed territories with radically different histories.

Its effects varied enormously from one place to another.

British rule in India, for example, involved economic exploitation, political domination and severe episodes of violence, but it also existed alongside major developments in railways, administration, education and legal institutions.

The existence of the latter does not erase the former.

Likewise, the British role in the abolition of the transatlantic slave trade is historically significant, but it cannot be separated from Britain’s earlier involvement in that trade.

Britain participated extensively in the slave trade before Parliament abolished the trade in 1807 and slavery in most of the British Empire in 1833.

Understanding both parts of that history is essential if students are to understand how Britain’s relationship with slavery evolved.

A curriculum that only celebrates abolition would be incomplete.

A curriculum that discusses only British exploitation would also leave out important historical developments.

The danger of turning history into political identity

This is where the current argument can become particularly difficult.

History is not simply a collection of facts. The selection of events, the language used to describe them and the questions students are encouraged to ask all influence interpretation.

That is why the national curriculum explicitly instructs pupils to understand how contrasting arguments and interpretations of the past have been constructed.

The objective is not necessarily to give students one approved political interpretation.

It is to give them the tools to assess competing evidence.

That principle can accommodate a curriculum that teaches about British achievements while also examining colonial violence.

It can also accommodate discussion of why historians disagree about the economic and political consequences of imperialism.

For Reform, however, the concern is that some educational and cultural institutions have moved beyond historical examination into political judgement.

The party’s criticism of “woke” interpretations reflects this wider cultural argument.

But because “woke” is a political label rather than a precise historical category, the more useful question is what particular teaching practice is actually being criticised.

Is a school presenting one interpretation as uncontested fact?

Is it omitting important evidence?

Is it teaching children that historical figures were either entirely heroic or entirely villainous?

Those questions can be assessed much more objectively than the use of a broad political label.

National pride and historical honesty

There is no inherent contradiction between national pride and historical honesty.

A country can recognise extraordinary achievements while acknowledging serious wrongdoing.

Britain’s industrial revolution transformed the global economy.

The parliamentary system influenced constitutional development elsewhere.

British scientific and technological discoveries changed everyday life.

The Royal Navy played a major role in defeating the transatlantic slave trade after abolition.

At the same time, Britain was one of the world’s leading participants in the slave trade before abolition.

British imperial expansion involved military conquest and political domination.

Colonial governments sometimes used coercion and violence against populations resisting British rule.

These are not mutually exclusive historical statements.

A mature understanding of British history requires students to consider all of them.

Why the debate matters politically

The argument over the Empire is unlikely to disappear because it touches on several of Britain’s most sensitive contemporary issues.

It intersects with immigration, national identity, race relations, foreign policy and Britain’s relationship with Commonwealth countries.

The reparations debate has made the subject even more politically prominent.

In 2026, Caribbean governments and campaigners have continued to press Britain and other former colonial powers over reparative justice. Reform UK has strongly opposed those demands, while the British government has acknowledged the historical wrong of slavery but rejected the idea that Britain has a present-day legal obligation to pay reparations.

The historical interpretation of empire therefore has consequences beyond classrooms.

How Britain understands its past influences how it responds to demands concerning that past.

That is one reason politicians such as Nigel Farage have increasingly treated history as part of a broader political debate about national identity.

What Reform’s position means

Reform’s argument can be understood as a demand for greater emphasis on national history and national achievement.

There is nothing inherently unusual about believing that children should learn about the achievements of their own country.

The question is what happens when that principle is taken further.

If “celebrating Britain” means ensuring that pupils understand Britain’s scientific, political, cultural and industrial contributions, that can coexist with serious study of slavery and colonialism.

If it means removing evidence that makes the national story uncomfortable, it would produce a different and much narrower form of history.

The same principle applies in the opposite direction.

If teaching colonial history means presenting Britain exclusively as an exploitative power and ignoring political, economic, technological and cultural complexity, pupils would also receive an incomplete picture.

The strongest historical education should therefore resist both extremes.

A debate about confidence

At the heart of Reform’s position is a broader argument about confidence.

Farage and his allies frequently suggest that Britain has become reluctant to celebrate its own identity.

Their opponents argue that national confidence should not depend on avoiding uncomfortable historical facts.

Those positions can be reconciled more easily than the political rhetoric sometimes suggests.

A country does not have to deny its achievements in order to acknowledge its crimes.

Nor does acknowledging historical crimes require rejecting everything positive about national history.

The challenge for education is to provide enough evidence for students to understand why different interpretations exist.

That is already reflected in the stated aims of England’s history curriculum, which emphasise evidence, historical perspective and contrasting interpretations.

The bigger question

The political argument over the British Empire is ultimately not about whether Britain should be taught as either good or bad.

It is about whether children should be given a sufficiently broad historical framework to understand how Britain became the country it is today.

Reform UK is right to raise the question of whether national achievements receive enough attention in some educational and cultural debates. At the same time, the existence of the current curriculum shows that the darker history of empire is already formally recognised in England’s schools.

The challenge is therefore not simply to decide which side of the argument should prevail.

It is to ensure that historical education is based on evidence rather than political fashion.

Students should know about the industrial revolution and the expansion of the Empire. They should also understand slavery, colonial violence and resistance to British rule.

They should learn about abolition as well as Britain’s earlier participation in slavery.

They should understand Indian independence and the end of Empire, while also studying the institutions and economic developments that shaped Britain’s global influence.

Most importantly, they should be taught how historians reach different conclusions from evidence.

That approach allows young people to understand Britain’s past without requiring them either to celebrate everything Britain did or condemn everything it did.

The argument over “woke” history will undoubtedly continue. But the more useful national debate is not whether Britain should be proud or ashamed.

It is whether British schools are giving the next generation enough knowledge, evidence and historical context to make that judgement for themselves.

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