There is something uniquely modern about the spectacle of a global celebrity denouncing the civilisation that made him famous while wearing its honours like decorative jewellery.
And few spectacles capture this contradiction better than the latest historical pronouncement from Lewis Hamilton, who now informs us that Africa must “take it back from the French, the Spanish, the Portuguese and the British.”
One pauses, briefly, to admire the confidence.
It takes a particular kind of intellectual horsepower to compress several centuries of geopolitics, economics, decolonisation and international development into a sentence that sounds as though it was assembled from TikTok clips between flights to Monaco.
Hamilton is, by any measure, an astonishing racing driver. Seven world championships, a career that rewrote Formula One history, a man who can thread a 1,000-horsepower projectile through Eau Rouge at speeds that would make most of us reconsider our life choices.
But history, alas, is not the same as a racing line.
The suggestion that Africa today remains somehow “controlled” by Britain, or Spain, Portugal, or France in the manner implied, is not merely wrong, it is the sort of intellectual fossil that belongs to the more theatrical corners of undergraduate seminar rooms. One half expects someone to produce a dog-eared copy of a post-colonial theory reader and begin quoting footnotes.
Even the most guilt-ridden academic departments in Britain, those places where the Empire is discussed in tones usually reserved for medieval plagues, would struggle to maintain with a straight face that Whitehall still runs Africa.
Has Hamilton glanced at the state of the Royal Navy under this Labour government lately?
The idea that Britain is secretly directing the politics of fifty-four sovereign African states would come as something of a surprise to the Treasury, which spends billions of British taxpayer money each year on development assistance, humanitarian relief, education initiatives and health programmes across the continent.
It might also surprise the governments of those countries themselves.
If anyone has been energetically inserting themselves into African affairs in recent years, it has not been the ghostly bureaucrats of some Edwardian imperial office. It has been the very modern, very muscular geopolitical presence of powers such as China and Russia.
China builds ports, railways and highways across the continent, while securing long-term access to minerals, resources and infrastructure. Russia, meanwhile, has perfected a darker export, mercenaries, security contractors and military trainers who appear with uncanny regularity wherever a fragile government needs help staying in power.
Compared with this rather direct style of influence, the supposed British grip on Africa looks suspiciously like a mirage.
But Hamilton’s comments fit neatly into a pattern. For years he has cultivated the image of the morally awakened megastar, the Formula One champion who delivers lectures on global justice between podium ceremonies. His decision to wear a Black Lives Matter helmet in 2020 amplified that reputation enormously.
And there is also something faintly absurd when a man worth hundreds of millions, living much of his life in tax-haven Monaco, is jetting around the world lecturing us all about political morality.
Virtue is easier to signal when the taxman cannot hear you right Lewis?
And the symbolism becomes even more curious when one remembers that Hamilton is not merely a British citizen but a decorated one. He received an MBE from Queen Elizabeth in 2008 and later a knighthood from King Charles during his time as Prince of Wales.
An interesting detail, because the MBE stands, awkwardly one might say, for Member of the Order of the British Empire.
If the very concept of British historical influence abroad is so morally intolerable, one wonders whether Sir Lewis intends to return the medal and the knighthood along with his critique. It would at least demonstrate a certain philosophical consistency.
Otherwise the performance begins to resemble a peculiar form of aristocratic rebellion, accepting the honours of the system while condemning the civilisation that created them.
Hamilton says he will continue racing until Formula One returns to Africa. On that point he deserves support. The continent absolutely should host a grand prix. It is long overdue.
But if he wishes to lecture the world about history, empire and international power, he might consider doing what racing drivers usually do before entering a corner at 200 miles an hour. Check the track.
Because at the moment, Sir Lewis appears to be charging into a geopolitical corner at full throttle, convinced he sees an empire in the mirrors that disappeared several laps ago.
Jack Lions
Image: DTM,Deutsche Tourenwagen Masters,Hockenheimring,Lewis Carl Davidson Hamilton,Lewis Hamilton,Motorsport. Image licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Germany license. Attribution: Foto: Stefan Brending, Lizenz: Creative Commons by-sa-3.0 de
