The debate over how we teach the British Empire has become one of the most polarising arguments in modern British education. Some insist the empire was a force for progress – ushering in parliamentary institutions, the rule of law, global trade and modernity. Others emphasise its violence, exploitation and the long shadow it casts over current-day inequalities.

What is striking is not that these views exist, but that arguments about empire increasingly sit within wider disputes about national identity, race, belonging and how Britain understands its past. We ask students to understand one of the most complex forces in world history, yet we are too often urged to present it as a single story.

This is why Parallel Histories, where I am the CEO, is launching a new eBook series on the British Empire. We believe that contested history should be taught as contested. The empire is not a morality tale with a single lesson – it is a vast, contradictory and deeply human story. To teach it responsibly, we must teach it from both perspectives – its architects and its subjects, those exercising power and those living under imperial rule, its beneficiaries and its victims, its triumphs and its traumas. These are competing claims that must be tested against evidence. The task is not to weigh benefits against harms, but to test competing claims about how empire was justified, how it was experienced and how it should be understood today.

The British Empire was never one thing. It was a global system that spanned continents and centuries, shaped by millions of people with competing motives and experiences. To reduce it to either a celebration or an indictment is to flatten the past into propaganda. Students deserve better.

From the imperialist British perspective, the empire was often justified as a civilising mission, a commercial enterprise or a strategic necessity. Many believed they were spreading law, order and modernity. Some saw it as a source of national pride and global influence.

From the perspective of the colonised, the empire could mean dispossession, racial hierarchy, economic exploitation and cultural suppression. It could also mean collaboration, adaptation, resistance and the forging of new identities under pressure.

When students encounter these perspectives side by side, something powerful happens – they begin to think critically. They learn that history is not a set of answers, but a set of arguments. They learn to weigh evidence, question assumptions and recognise bias – including their own. They learn that people in the past, like people today, acted from mixed motives and lived with unintended consequences. They test claims against evidence, look at sources, draw inferences and confront contradictions between different interpretations.

The current debate about the empire often collapses into a tug-of-war between nostalgia and condemnation. But the real problem is not about which side wins – it is that students are rarely shown that there are other sides at all.

When we teach only the positive story, we risk producing students who cannot understand why the empire remains a source of pain and anger in many parts of the world. When we teach only the negative story, we risk producing students who cannot understand why the empire was supported by so many at home and abroad, or why its legacy is still defended today.

In both cases, we produce citizens who are poorly equipped to navigate the complexities of modern Britain – a country whose multicultural fabric, global relationships and political debates are all shaped by imperial history, and shaped by the decisions we the British took after the end of empire. A single story creates fragility. Parallel stories create intellectual resilience.

Our approach is simple but transformative: we present students with competing historical narratives, each grounded in primary sources, and ask them to interrogate both. We do not tell them what to think. We teach them how to think. Students investigate the evidence from one perspective and argue from that position, and then switch to do the same from the alternative contested perspective. The strength of this process is that it requires students to weigh evidence and test conclusions.

In our British Empire programme, students encounter British politicians defending imperial expansion as a moral duty alongside Indian nationalists describing the economic devastation of colonial rule. They read about African leaders negotiating between collaboration and resistance, and Caribbean voices reflecting on slavery, emancipation and identity. British soldiers, missionaries, merchants and administrators explaining their motives in their own words, alongside anti-colonial thinkers articulating visions of freedom and self-determination.

Students then analyse and debate from these perspectives – not to endorse them, but to understand them. They learn that history is constructed, contested and alive. This method does not dilute the truth – it deepens it. It does not avoid controversy – it equips students to handle it. It does not impose a narrative as much as it empowers students to build one.

We live in a moment when public discourse is increasingly polarised, when social media rewards outrage over understanding and when young people are bombarded with simplified narratives about complex issues. Teaching contested history through parallel perspectives is not just an academic exercise – it is a democratic necessity.

When historical judgements become markers of political or cultural allegiance, enquiry becomes harder. Parallel Histories separates scrutiny from allegiance: students argue from one interpretation, switch to the competing interpretation and then reach their own judgement.

If students cannot grapple with the contradictions of the past, how will they grapple with the contradictions of the present? If they cannot understand why people disagree about history, how will they understand why people disagree about politics, identity, or justice today?

The British Empire is not just a chapter in a textbook. It is a living force in our national story. To teach it honestly, we must teach it in full. The question is not whether the British Empire was good or bad. The question is whether we trust students enough to let them decide for themselves.

Something ugly has erupted in Middlesbrough. Nine people are dead after two separate incidents days apart – first a high-speed crash on the weekend, then what appears to be a deliberate arson attack on a family home. Police strongly suspect that both events were gang-related. Around 200 extra officers have been sent to the city to aid investigations and quell the growing sense of anarchy.

And right on cue, the excuses have started. I’ve already seen Labour and Green politicians talking about deprivation and a lack of opportunities for young people. What bloody lack of opportunity?

On Friday, I stood beside the flowers left for PCs Matthew Blades and Tom Clough – two victims of the weekend’s head-on collision. Barely 200 metres away is Boho X – the gleaming, 60,000 square-foot global headquarters of games developer Double Eleven, packed with ambitious young people working in a global industry. Clustered around it are dozens of vibrant small businesses, cashing in on the opportunities the world presents.

Teesside has enormous industrial investment, booming businesses, apprenticeships, great colleges and one of Britain’s biggest digital sectors. But we’re being told that our underclass is violent and criminal because society hasn’t provided enough career options.

Total bollocks. I spent four years as the mayor of Middlesbrough, and many more working with charities in our poorest neighbourhoods. I’ve seen the worst of poverty, addiction and genuinely awful childhoods.

I’ve also seen something our political class avoids acknowledging: people are behaving appallingly because we’ve allowed them to. They discover that breaking the law doesn’t cost them anything, that intimidation works and that police are stretched. Even if they are arrested, the courts are clogged for years ahead and prisons are already full. Then we’re astonished when they become more brazen.

The high-speed crash appears to prove this observation. Four of the five drivers of the car that caused the collision had pleaded guilty to a combined 37 offences. Yet none of them had ever seen the inside of a prison cell.

As mayor, I massively expanded CCTV because residents desperately wanted action against crime. Criminals arrived with industrial grinders and cut down the camera masts, so we strengthened them. So they used vehicles to ram them instead.

This wasn’t a cry for help. It’s contempt for law and disrespect for those who comply. And the people suffering from it aren’t MPs on nice streets or Guardian journalists. They’re cleaners, warehouse workers, bus drivers and their kids. Their lives can be made unbearable. Literally.

I’ve met residents too frightened to talk to me near their own homes. Some were even too scared to contact Crimestoppers anonymously. Where is the national outrage about them?

Instead, whenever criminality becomes impossible to ignore, Britain conducts another national therapy session about the criminal. What happened in his childhood? Was he excluded from school? Do we need another youth club? Stop it.

Of course circumstances matter. I’ve spent years helping homeless people, addicts and ex-offenders, and I’ve seen people turn their lives around. But sympathy or empathy before punishment is wrong. This approach has emboldened the people who are wrecking lives and communities.

The working classes work when they can. They pay taxes and obey the law. And we leave them to watch a minority deal drugs, intimidate neighbours and create chaos around them.

The truly compassionate response is to protect the victim. That means enough police to make getting caught a likely outcome of committing a crime. We need courts that swiftly judge and punish offenders while the crime is still fresh in everyone’s minds. And we need enough prison cells to keep dangerous and prolific criminals locked up.

Prison works for the simplest reason imaginable: it separates a criminal from his victims. He isn’t intimidating his neighbour, burgling someone’s home or recruiting another youngster into dealing drugs.

Here’s the most important thing about what’s happening in Middlesbrough: this isn’t really about Middlesbrough. My hometown isn’t some uniquely dysfunctional hellhole. Most people here are doing exactly what people everywhere do: working, raising families, building businesses and getting on with life. My 83-year-old mother still gets the bus into town and volunteers on the local council estate. She experiences no crime. That’s Middlesbrough, too.

What’s different today is that Middlesbrough has exposed something Britain has preferred not to confront – namely, the nationwide existence of small and poisonous groups, living outside the social rules that everyone else accepts. We’ve indulged them, coddled them and now we’re paying the price.

Don’t blame Middlesbrough. Look at the criminal underclass we’ve allowed to develop across Britain. Stop asking what society failed to give them and start asking why society tolerated them.

Andy Preston was mayor of Middlesbrough from 2019 until 2023.

‘You never get a second chance to make a first impression.’

‘Better to be overdressed than under.’

‘Clothes maketh the man.’

These phrases often cross my mind when putting an outfit together, probably because I heard them so often from my mother. She, like me, believes that clothes matter. Making an effort with your outfit, showing you’ve given some thought to what you’re wearing, how you’ve put it together, what matches, and what doesn’t, shows a level of respect for a situation. And, more importantly, for yourself.

I do wish some of these well-worn phrases would cross the mind of our scruff-in-chief, Andy Burnham. Not only are some of the prime minister’s clothing choices frankly hideous, what’s worse is that it appears to be a deliberate decision. A decision so important that he chose to announce it days before he was due to become prime minister. Far from discussing the myriad of problems Britain faces, Burnham chose to share with the nation that he plans on ditching his suit and tie for the vast majority of his work.

Burnham’s recent arrival in Ukraine showed that his lax dress code has gone too far. Earlier this week, His Majesty’s prime minister disembarked the train in Kyiv wearing a zip-up polo shirt better suited to a night in Wetherspoons than his first introduction to a nation – and an ally – at war. He may have been travelling, but would it have killed him to stick on a shirt and a smart jacket?

Maybe I’ve been radicalised. I often used to broadcast in a smart suit jacket with a shirt and pocket square, without a tie, thinking this was sufficient. But the combination of a partner who refuses to put the bins out without his hair being styled, and a TV colleague who once took me aside and asked why I don’t wear a tie on air, made me realise I was demeaning my job. And, more importantly, myself.

So I now broadcast in a tie. Every time. Why? Because sartorial standards matter. They matter for those on TV. They matter for those in important jobs. And they certainly matter for the man who has one of, if not the, most important jobs in the country.

Does Burnham think he’s cool not to think this way? Does he believe it’ll make him more ‘down’ with the ‘yoof’ vote? Labour believes 16-year-olds deserve the right to vote, so maybe it makes sense that their leader dresses like one?

Burnham isn’t alone in his poor style. Who can forget the hideous sight of Tony Blair in high-waisted jeans in a ‘casual’ meeting with former US president George W Bush?

Or the worst-dressed prime minister – in fact, the worst-dressed man in history – Boris Johnson? In a stained and ill-fitting suit, un-ironed shirt, unkempt hair, Boris often resembled having been dragged through a hedge backwards, forwards and then being beaten by it.

When did our leaders lose their sense of style? Remember Margaret Thatcher? She used to have Marks & Spencer open early to buy her power suits. The only time you ever saw her in anything other than a coordinated shirt and jacket with matching court shoes was when she was in the back of a tank. Which is exactly how it should be.

In your wildest imagination, could you picture her meeting a foreign dignitary in a t-shirt? She’d beat you with her matching handbag at the mere suggestion, and she’d be right to do so.

Even Keir Starmer made the effort with a suit and tie. Okay, it was Lord Alli who appears to have both chosen and purchased them, but at least Starmer’s clothing was more successful than his tenure as prime minister.

Burnham actually looks quite good in a suit, when he bothers. Can he not just bother a little more often?

Because I do judge people by how they dress. Not by the cost of their clothes – a wardrobe doesn’t need to be expensive to be suitable. I judge the effort made, against the occasion that requires it.

And I expect to be similarly judged. I want people to know I’ve put some thought into it. Yes, it’s a hassle to have an ironed shirt every day. To think whether my jacket and tie work together, or whether my pocket square is the right colour (I’m a fan of a slightly clashing pocket square). The shoes also have to work. Even the socks.

It’s about respect. As prime minister, you’re literally making decisions about people’s livelihoods, about their taxes, their social care, their health care, wars, infrastructure, the economy. You’re meeting other world leaders. You’re leading a huge team, many of whom look up to you.

Doing so in casual sportswear just doesn’t cut it. It shows a lack of respect for the people around you. More importantly, it shows a lack of respect for the office you hold.

And that’s much more important than any spin or focus group that might say younger voters don’t care about how you dress. Our prime minister should be showing younger voters why it matters, and why standards are important.

Andy Burnham is often accused of having much more style over substance. When it comes to his clothing choices, I really wish he did.

Cristo Foufas is a TV and radio presenter.