Is a nuanced public discussion about Churchill possible?

One thing that struck me most when I lived in Germany is the difference between discussions about national history there compared with the U.K. This of course has a lot to do with the unique horrors of 20th Century German history. The development of public discussions, or 'Vergangenheitsbetwältigung' (overcoming the past) on these was slow, fraught with generational politics and driven at times only by major events (public trials of Nazis in the 1960s, publication of particular articles by historians etc). But the long term result has extended beyond discussion specifically of Nazism and to a popular public discourse on history which is less inclined to thinking about national heroes. Yes, there are figures like Konrad Adenauer who hold a place in national mythology, but I doubt there would much of an uproar if a major politician criticised Adenauer. This has more than once led me to wonder: however disanalogous the horrors of empire may be, might it be worth having a more open discussion about recent British history?

The events of the last week have at shown that this can have unintended consequences, or at the very least that the legacy of Winston Churchill might not be the place to start. There has rightly been uproar at Jacob Rees Mogg's comments on Question Time in defence of concentration camps in the Boer War. Robert Saunder's has written a excellent refutation of his remarks here, though others have too. What Mogg's comments show is precisely how these discussions can go wrong. It seems entirely reasonable to ask for a nuanced discussion about Churchill which includes aspects of him which we should not be comfortable with. But what if the result of that is not nuance, but simply that people now feel obliged to defend even the most horrific things he is associated with? Perversely, this could actually be worse than not having had the discussion at all. If  public discussion of a national figure is limited to a selective national mythology, the bad bits are just omitted. This may actually be more conducive to progressive attitudes than the situation in which they are actively defended.

And what kind of nuance are we hoping to achieve anyway? Deciding whether Churchill's role in the second world war on balance allows him to still be a hero in spite of the Bengal Famine is not really a useful analytic question. Sometimes totalising judgements are necessary, like when deciding who to elect. But for the most part, they are of little analytic use, and we are probably better off trying to avoid taking a position about an individual overall. If discussions about Churchill mean people feel obliged to actively and consciously take a position on this question, we might all be the worse off for it. It might be better to leave public discussion a ritual very few put much thought into, and those who do think about these questions just ignore. Honest public discussions of the brutality and cruelty of the British Empire might better start elsewhere.