We should not be ashamed of Britain’s history, says Truss

BRITAIN must be proud of its history “warts and all”, Liz Truss has said, as she warned that our adversaries are worrying about future threats and not the past.

In a speech at Chatham House, the Foreign Secretary defended the history of the British Empire as she insisted that “Britain is the greatest country on earth”.

She warned that the free world had “taken its eye off the ball” and how “in fashionable circles, people talked about how we should be ashamed of our history and doubtful about our future”.

“So it’s time to be proud of who we are and what we stand for,” she added.

“It’s time to dump the baggage holding us back. Our history – warts and all – makes us what we are today.

“Britain is the greatest country on earth. Whoever you are, wherever you come from, you can achieve your dreams.”

She also called for like-minded countries to help “build the network of liberty and advance the frontiers of freedom”. Ms Truss said to do this, the UK needed to “stop fighting about the past” and insisted that the British Empire was “a fact of our history”.

In defence of the Empire she said that although “egregious things have happened in Britain” there was not “a country in the world you can point to that’s had a perfect history of modern liberalism”. She added: “So let’s stop fighting about the past, let’s start fighting for the future, because that’s what our adversaries are thinking about.

“They’re not thinking about what happened in the past in their countries, they’re busy out there with malign information on the internet, or threatening aggression, or using economic coercion to affect their goals.”

In her speech yesterday, Ms Truss set out the country’s foreign policy aims as she suggested Britain’s adversaries were gaining advantages as they were not focused on their past. She warned that hostile forces were using disinformation to “undermine truth” and that extremists were “perpetuating malign ideologies through social media”.

“Autocratic regimes are using this maelstrom of militancy, mistrust and misinformation to gain the upper hand,” she said. “Now is the time for the free world to fight back, and to use the power of economics and technology to promote freedom not fear.”

Ms Truss also called on the UK to “avoid strategic dependency” on Russia and China and said it would be a “mistake for Russia to launch an attack on Ukraine”. Ms Truss also warned against the EU dependency on Russian gas – the EU gets 40 per cent from Russia.

Ms Truss was speaking before a summit of G7 counterparts in Liverpool.