Where in God’s name do Caribbean countries get the brass neck to demand trillions in reparations from Britain for the slave trade? How dare they? We owe them nothing. And we should pay them nothing. And those countries with their grifter governments who try to pursue us through the courts for the trillions they claim we owe them should be left in no doubt that we will fight them all the way.

While we’re doing that, we should remind the rest of the world that Britain was the country that bust a gut to abolish the slave trade. We should remind people it was Britain that fought tooth and nail on the high seas to hunt down and stop slavers losing the lives of many of our sailors in the process.

Let’s remind them it was Britain that between 1808 and 1867 spent a gargantuan 1.8% of its annual GDP hunting down slavers. So why the Hell, hundreds of years on, do these Caribbean countries think that Britain – where there was no slavery – should be held responsible for what happened centuries ago?

Why are they applying 21st-century human rights and legal frameworks to an institution that hundreds of years ago was legal all over the world? There is no one alive today who has any need to apologise for the slave trade. And no one alive today has been directly affected by it, so why should we be paying them cash?

These screams for reparations are from a bunch of Caribbean countries trying it on with a nation they see as a soft touch – Britain. Are they demanding money from Spain, France, Holland and Portugal, who all indulged in slavery? Are they going after those African countries that sold millions of Africans into slavery and who vehemently opposed Britain ending the slave trade because it was so profitable for them?

Are they demanding cash from Saudi Arabia, which didn’t abolish slavery until 1962, or Ethiopia, which didn’t abolish it until 1942, or China, which didn’t abolish it until 1910? Of course they’re not because they know perfectly well those countries would tell them to do one. So they come after Britain knowing that some dummy like David Lammy will start shouting his mouth off about oppression, racism and white privilege.

I’m sick to the back teeth of Britain being told it must relentlessly self-flagellate over the slave trade and that we must constantly tell ourselves how hateful we are because of what our ancestors did centuries ago.

Yes, slavery was a despicable trade, but hundreds of years ago, it was a perfectly legal one. Countries all over the world bought and sold slaves because it was seen as a permanent institution until, against vicious opposition, Britain put a stop to it in 1808.

Yet this week, we learn that apart from Caribbean countries wanting to sue us through the international courts, they also want to train schoolchildren to be the reparations activists of the future. i.e., they will be brainwashed in class into believing that Britain owes them.

These countries even want to incorporate slavery and reparations into maths lessons. So, rather than counting items in a shop in an arithmetic exercise they want to teach children to count how many Africans were seized by slavers.

Well let’s hope they also teach them to count the numbers of Africans who were seized by fellow Africans and sold to European traders who rarely captured slaves themselves. Will they teach them that Britain paid out £20m between 1807 and 1833 – a massive sum back then – to buy and free every slave in its dominions? Will they teach them that it was Britain who came up with the plan to wipe out slavery worldwide? I’m guessing not.

Also will they be suing all those African states for reparations? Or those Islamic countries where 17M Africans were sold as slaves? Or is it just soft touch Britain they’re chasing because they see the Establishment here likes to drag itself around in a historical hair shirt blaming Britain for the world’s evils.

Of course these Caribbean countries see that now is a good time to resurrect the call for reparations because we have a Government that never misses an opportunity to belittle and degrade its own people and is forever telling us how evil and racist we all are. It’s time this Government found its backbone and told all these Caribbean countries they’re entitled to nothing. And that they’re getting nothing. And if they persist we need to stop the aid we currently give them and we need to stop dishing out visas to those countries screaming that we owe them trillions.

These Caribbean countries are not history’s victims. They are a group of autonomous peoples who have determined their own history. Every country has suffered wrongs – man made catastrophes every bit as bad as slavery – but they’re not all Britain’s fault. These countries have determined their own history and if they’ve made a mess of that its not up to Britain to compensate them.