One of the more enjoyable tasks that descended on me during my epoch-making time as a minister in the federal government was to attend international conferences. They were a wonderful chance to travel around the world at the taxpayer’s expense, dress up in Hawaiian shirts, be addressed as ‘Your Excellency’, give everyone the benefit of my reflections on world affairs and at the same time avoid controversy at home by abstaining from voting on any resolution that might conceivably do anything worthwhile. I was guided in this momentous work by the principle espoused by an old hand in diplomacy that the most important item on the agenda of any international conference is the fixing of the date of the next meeting. After all, once you had got a new gravy train up and running and the shakedown of Western countries who were expected to pay for it had begun, we professionals had a vested interest in keeping it alive. And the venue for the next meeting was also important; it would be far more effective in keeping an issue alive if delegates were summoned to a conference in the Germanic splendour of old Vienna, rather than the slums of Dar es Salaam.

Accordingly, by applying these principles, we achieved some remarkable results; we ended the tyranny of colonialism in Rhodesia and replaced it with the benign democracy of Robert Mugabe, handed most of Africa and the Middle East over to religious lunatics, hypnotised everyone into believing that you could change the climate by abolishing industry and commerce, and convinced the Western world to bankrupt itself by pouring trillions of dollars into helping indolent people in failed states who would never dream of lifting a finger to help themselves.

In fact, we solved so many problems and crises that it began to dawn on me that we had solved virtually all of them and were fast running out of new ones to take their place. Moreover, this regrettable trend has continued up to the present day and we now find that the only remaining and unsolved international issue is how to find a means of generating new ones. But fortunately, a new issue has arisen that promises to relieve this drought, and it is one which, properly handled, might also fill the bottomless reservoir of guilt that besets Western countries and provide a new mechanism for wasting money, which is the real objective of everyone engaged in politics and government.

This new issue that might just save the international community from having nothing to do is the issue of slavery, and particularly the payment of reparations by those who engaged in it to those who were its alleged victims. Indeed, you may well have noticed that the issue was recently placed on the world agenda at the meeting of Commonwealth leaders in Antigua and endorsed by King Charles. I therefore hold great hope that slavery might provide what the international community so clearly lacks: a brand new issue.

In preparation, I have been making a close study of slavery and I have been pleased to find that it ticks all the boxes for what qualifies as a major international issue.

First, and as a non-negotiable minimum, it will unleash a tsunami of guilt. Only the hardest of hearts will be able to hold back a torrent of tears at the pageant of grief that will be paraded before us as the tale is told and retold of buccaneers of the colonial and imperialist West snatching children from their loving parents and transporting them in chains across the seas.

Secondly, slavery has unlimited scope for United Nations resolutions, bureaucracy, treaties, new taxes to pay for the reparations, and summits and conferences at the right places with new opportunities to abstain from voting on any resolution (but only after the issue has been milked for every drop of compassion that will be squeezed from its ample teats).

Thirdly, and this is what the issue is really about, it has that highly desirable feature of all good international issues, stupidity. In fact, the significance of an international issue increases in direct proportion to its stupidity, as the more devoid of common sense an issue may be, the longer it will take to pretend to resolve it. And slavery is a prime example. The claim for reparations is a claim by Africans for compensation for what Europeans allegedly did to them. But as the issue is developed it will be revealed that most of the slave trade was actually initiated and carried out by Africans themselves, Africans who were only too willing to buy and sell their own race at the going rate. Any slack in filling the demands of the market was obligingly taken up by Arabs, and the potentates of the Middle East have openly practised slavery for centuries. Thus, when all of the evidence is in, it will be seen that if any reparations are due, they should be paid by the descendants of the original perpetrators, namely Africans and Arabs.

Moreover, who will be rewarded by reparations if they are paid? It is almost impossible to conceive that they would end up in the pockets of the descendants of the victims, even if they could now be located, which must surely be impossible. Indeed, if any of them are found, they should give us a discount, as they are far better off in prosperous Western countries than they would be if their ancestors had stayed in Africa. The reparation will simply become yet another hefty transfer of money from the long-suffering taxpayers of Western countries to the elites of the claimant states who will have yet again shaken money from the West to atone for its self-inflicted guilt over non-existent crimes.

Accordingly, I am sure you can see that slavery will provide just what the world needs: a new issue to keep the wheels of international diplomacy turning, powered by guilt, bureaucracy and stupidity. It can’t fail.