[vkou]

Unless the UK has undergone a revolution in the past 80 years, I'm afraid to say that it is still the same government. The people involved are different, but just like in a company, it doesn't matter if the C-suite changes over the years - its still the same organization.

Like a corporation, that government definitely feels bound by the obligations made by its predecessors, and, likewise, feels entitled to receive any obligations owed to it.

To argue otherwise would be to argue that debts, treaties, as well as all prior legislative and executive decisions all disappear every time you hold an election.

[notahacker]

There are many valid criticisms of the present government including in human rights areas, but considering it to be morally culpable for the legally-sanctioned harassment of a gay man before most of its MPs were born (and before the actual PM backed his party's pro gay-marriage faction and its MPs passed a law to formally pardon people convicted of Turing's "offence") simply because it respects its predecessors' debts is absurd. And exactly the same standard is applied to corporations, which is why we don't consider German CEOs to be Nazi war criminals.

Governments are composed of people: people inherit money and associated debt but they don't inherit guilt.

[feurio]

The current PM's quotes about "bum boys" (and so on) from his past-life as a journalist speak for themselves about his moral culpability:

https://www.pinknews.co.uk/2019/12/12/boris-johnson-tank-top...

[vkou]

If governments don't inherit guilt, why do they occasionally feel the need to apologize and compensate people for past repression? Why do other governments being up old disputes, to justify current antagonism?

The UK's recent actions towards Turing were very much not an apology, however.

Nearly all repression was the law of the land at the time it was carried out. If the German or Russian, or American government 'forgave' the ethnic groups it's predecessor mistreated, there would be an incredibly justified uproar about it (Because as the transgressor, the government should be the one asking for forgiveness, not giving it. And for two of them, it would not even a direct successor of the government responsible!)