The framing trap in the reparations debate works as follows. The campaign presents a binary: either you support reparations or you are defending slavery. Politicians, unwilling to be characterised as defending slavery, refuse to argue clearly against reparations. Their refusal implies that the argument has merit. The campaign treats the refusal as evidence of guilt and increases pressure. The cycle continues.
Escaping the trap requires refusing the binary. The honest position is not between paying and defending slavery. It is a third position: slavery was wrong, Britain participated in it, Britain eventually ended it at considerable cost, the legal case for reparations of this kind does not exist, the mechanism is legally and practically unworkable, and the better path forward involves practical cooperation. This third position is more intellectually honest and more politically defensible than either the CARICOM position or the defensive non-commitment that currently passes for British policy.
Making this argument publicly requires accepting short-term criticism. Anyone who makes it clearly will be accused of defending slavery. But the accusation is false, and false accusations lose their power when they are consistently and calmly refused. The politicians who have most credibly engaged with difficult historical questions are those who said clearly what they believed rather than calibrating every sentence for maximum defensibility.
