These quotes are not quite as damning as they seem. Mill was not defending empire per se. He was defending the rule of the disinterested experts of the East India Company. After the Indian Mutiny of 1857 led to direct rule from London, Mill feared that grasping white settlers would have the ear of the British parliament and press. He honourably condemned the British troops, who put down the rebellion, for participating in an "inhuman and indiscriminate massacre", and "organising the seizing of persons in all parts of the country and the putting them to death without trial and then boasting of it in a manner almost disgraceful to humanity".

The historical record is more complicated than the post-colonial condemnations allow. But it is not good enough to exonerate Mill. An Indian reader would point out that the supposedly "disinterested" servants of the East India Company whom Mill served were just as grasping and as much foreign occupiers as the imperial administrators who replaced them. To his credit, Varouxakis does not attempt to exonerate Mill, merely show that he is not the monster his critics make him out to be. His study, which covers much else besides Mill's attitude to empire, would be a fine and refreshingly well-written academic work were it not for one question which cannot be ducked.

Who now believes that rights are all very well for Englishmen but not for the lesser breeds? Who now says that the emancipation of women is essential for white-skinned women in the West but not brown-skinned women in the East? Who, in short, is the inheritor of the old imperialist double standard?

Go to any university and you will hear stark warnings about "imposing Western values" on different cultures. You will be told loudly that it is "inappropriate" to argue against Afghan women wearing the burka, even when Afghan men have forced them to wear it. Try to say that all gays should enjoy the right to sexual equality, and Muslim regimes that impose the death penalty on homosexuals must be fought, and you will be accused, as my friend Peter Tatchell was accused, of being an "Islamophobe", "racist" and "collaborator with the extreme Right". Maintain that freedom of speech is a universal human right that no cleric can restrict, and you will hear that you are allowing the incitement of racism and may well be a racist yourself. Say that we must show solidarity with feminists and trade unionists fighting theocrats, and you will be told, as I have been told, that they are "native informers" of the West.

If you want to find examples of Mill's fear of manipulative leaders playing off one ethnic group against another, meanwhile, look at the attempts of Ken Livingstone in London or Ilmar Reepalu in Malmö to play off Muslims against Jews, and notice that both of them are gentlemen of the Left.

The same people who condemn John Stuart Mill now exhibit all of his vices and none of his virtues. It is interesting to argue about long-dead liberal imperialists. Far more urgent is the need to argue against the double standards of the post-colonial and postmodern racists of our day, who provide high-minded justifications for oppression when they ought to know better.