UK politics live: Boris Johnson 'does not agree that this is a racist country', says No 10

Starmer: Colston statue should have been removed but toppling ‘completely wrong’; 35 police officers injured in London protestMinisters face backlash after claiming Britain is not racistKeir Starmer’s LBC phone-in: summary and analysisUK coronavirus updates – liveUS protests updates – live 3.00pm BST David Olusoga, the historian and broadcaster, has written a terrific article for the Guardian about the toppling of the Edward Colston statue in Bristol. Here is an excerpt.The fact that a man who died 299 years ago is today on the front pages of most of Britain’s newspapers suggests that Bristol has not been brilliant at coming to terms with its history. Despite the valiant and persistent efforts of campaigners, all attempts to have the statue peacefully removed were thwarted by Colston’s legion of defenders. In 2019, attempts to fix a plaque to the pedestal collapsed after Bristol’s Society of Merchant Venturers, the high priests of the Colston cult, insisted on watering down the text, adding qualifications that, it was felt, had the effect of minimising his crimes. Yet what repulsed many about the statue was not that it valorised Colston but that it was silent about his victims, those whose lives were destroyed to build the fortune he lavished upon the city …Today is the first full day since 1895 on which the effigy of a mass murderer does not cast its shadow over Bristol’s city centre. Those who lament the dawning of this day, and who are appalled by what happened on Sunday, need to ask themselves some difficult questions. Do they honestly believe that Bristol was a better place yesterday because the figure of a slave trader stood at its centre? Are they genuinely unable – even now – to understand why those descended from Colston’s victims have always regarded his statue as an outrage and for decades pleaded for its removal? Related: The toppling of Edward Colston’s statue is not an attack on history. It is history | David Olusoga 2.53pm BST Here is Marvin Rees, the mayor of Bristol, explaining to ITV why, as a descendent of Jamaicans, he found the Edward Colston statue so offensive. But there is a difference between understanding why people wanted to tear it down and condoning that, he explains.’I’m a descendant of Jamaicans who at some point were enslaved and I can’t say that that statue was anything other than offensive to me’Bristol Mayor @MarvinJRees says he understands why protesters toppled a statue of slave trader Edward Colston https://t.co/LMk0Wa1m33 pic.twitter.com/Rdjd0zx9UG Continue reading…
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