Fool Britannia
So, critics of Gordon Brown’s “Britishness Day” headline grabber didn’t so much shoot the fish in that particular barrel as take an anti-tank weapon to them. As Gordon picked the sushi and splinters of wood out of his porridge this morning, he must have wondered what the hell’s gone wrong. Are the fish getting larger, the barrels smaller or the marksmen sharper?
A few years ago I lived in Staines underneath the Heathrow flightpath. For the first few weeks it was hell as seemingly every few minutes a jet would roar past. But slowly I acclimatised until one day I realised I hardly notice the noise at all any more.
I wonder if that’s what’s happening with New Labour initiatives. Other than those with blogs and newspaper columns to fill, who gawp at these things wondering how the hell they stay up, who’s really paying attention to Brown wrapping himself in the flag or Blair barking, “you have 20 seconds to comply“? Most people busily get on with their lives while yet another focus-grouped idiocy screams over their heads.
Does anybody wake in the night, fretting about what it is to be British? Aren’t we more likely to crawl from bed in the morning sagging under the crushing melancholy of the thought our crap jobs, or our roaring hangovers, or the nagging purposelessness that is our post-millenium existence than whether there are enough union flags fluttering in the breeze? Brown, if anything, is to be envied because if this really is close to the top of his agenda he must be just about as carefree as it’s possible to get.
Did he really stand at the Cenotaph last November and think, “what this rememberance of all those young men who were shot, bombed, shrapneled and bayonetted needs is the sight of a large black lady dancing with a policeman and wearing his helmet, or maybe a bunch of Chelsea Pensioners jigging arythmically with Girls Aloud”?
I was over in Australia and everyone’s like “Are you proud to be an American?” And I was like, “Um, I don’t know, I didn’t have a lot to do with it. You know, my parents fucked there, that’s about all. You know, I was in the spirit realm at that time, going ‘FUCK IN PARIS! FUCK IN PARIS!’ but they couldn’t hear me, because I didn’t have a mouth. I was a spirit without lungs or a mouth, or vocal cords. They fucked here. Okay, I’m proud.’”
Bill Hicks
And as Roger McGough said, patriots are a bit nuts in the head. It’s all down to an accident of birth, after all. Brown’s idea is like calling for a day of celebration for being white or male or having two ears - inherently ridiculous - and if he’d picked any other concept, he’d have been laughed out and/or lynched:
You must have a clear view of what being a brunette means, what you value about being a brunette and what gives us purpose as brunettes.
Why pundits speculate over whether the handover from Blair to Brown will be a “smooth transtion”, I’m not quite sure. If Brown’s speech is anything to go by, we won’t be able to see the join:
[W]e have no constitutional statement or declaration enshrining our objectives as a country; no mission statement defining purpose; and no explicitly stated vision of our future.
Mission statement. As pleased as I’d be to see a written constitution for the UK I think we can be certain that no one with even an ounce of romance in their souls would be allowed within a hundred miles of the drafting process.
Brown’s brainchild should certainly keep the honours system ticking as well:
I am meeting all faith groups to discuss community service. And shortly I will meet business organisations.
And I thank businesses who have already signed up as pioneer sponsors for this idea and today I invite and urge businesses to match fund £100 million – £50 million each from government and business – for long-term funding for this new idea.
I wonder how many peerages, knighthoods and C/M/OBE’s £50 million buys.
Posted on January 16th, 2006 at 9:25 am
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Hey Justin - I wonder if Brown’s obsession with a renewed sense of national purpose (’National Prudence Day’?) or a patritotism of the left or whatever marks the final collapse of progressive thinking in the Labour party? Think about it: having stolen all the other clothes in the Tory wardrobe, hired the tailor and bought the shop he owns to boot, what else is there but an ever-more desperate search for Britishness (if only to put those bleedin’ Muslims on notice that They Are Being Watched)? And of course, the chosen day just has to be one which is about war, which New Labour has plenty of experience in, especially against abstract nouns.
I’m not so sure. Are there any philosophical underpinnings to this beyond news cycle management? The speech has all the passion of a ten year-old’s “what I did on my holidays” essay.
Gordon hadn’t been in the papers for a bit and he has to show more sides to his character beyond his immediate brief (a la Ming Campbell) to prove his leadership credentials. The details of the speech won’t be remembered but some of it might have stuck in people’s minds as a general fuzzy “Brown for Britishness” glow.
Brown calls for more shows of national identiy and pride in January. A few months pass. The Football World Cup comes around - flags are everywhere. Another great victory for Labour policy. Sorted.
The Football World Cup comes around - flags are everywhere.
They’ll be the Cross of St George, not the Union Flag, you vexillological ignoramus.
Oh, my bad. The England flag’s still the preserve of racists and stuff then is it? Good good.
It’s probably just because Jocky MacGordo’s upset that Scotland are so shit at all sports that don’t involve sliding weights on ice. The again, isn’t it the Winter Olympics soon and all? Problem solved again!
Scotland are so shit at all sports
Actually, we had two quarter-finalists in the Lakeside World Darts last week. Who’s laughing now, eh? Eh?
When I used to write about football for part of my living - a couple of books and about ten years’ worth of articles for When Saturday Comes in the days before it was shit - I tried to get publishers interested in a book about why football fans shoulsn’t support their national team.
However, I couldn’t get a peep of interest from anybody, which given how much absolute crap does get published, is saying something. And what’s odd is, mention the idea in company of any sort and you almost inevitably get a raging debate.
So the Great Unwritten Football Book was never written. Sorry about that.
“if he’d picked any other concept, he’d have been laughed out and/or lynched”
Gay Pride marches ?
PS - I think Brown’s idea is as crap as everyone else does - but I can understand why he’s doing it, foolish though he be. Maybe I’m wrong.
By this post and the comments, everyone thinks he’s doing it either a) to position himself as a national leader post-blair
b) to’warn’ muslims
I agree it was a load of arse, but nevertheless i am proud of what i conceive as “Britishness,” perhaps surprisingly: to myself mainly.
“Continuity, therefore, is relative rather than absolute - and the same applies to the Englishman’s far-famed conservatism and respect for the past. These qualities have proved quite compatible with a fierce radicalism in defence of what he has regarded as his ancient rights, whether embodied in Magna Carta, the Common Law or the Revolution Settlement of 1688. Indeed, in the history of England, resistance to despotism and assertion of ‘the rights of free-born Englishmen’, said to be based on immemorial tradition, have tended to be closely associated, particularly since the 16th century - so much so that the English have been seen by others as a people peculiarly resistant to being governed, if willingness to be governed is equated with acceptance of or acquiescence in tight centralised control.”
~ A.H. Hanson & M. Walles Governing Britain
Now, obviously this pair were a bit over phallo-St. George-o-centric, but they’ve got a point. I put it down to the shit weather myself. It doesn’t take much more on top to really piss us off, but it’s not bad enough to keep us shivering at home eking out our daily crumbs.
What i wonder now though is where it all went wrong? I just can’t get with the fierce watching of television in defence of the right to radically drive to a supermarket, there to enjoy the ancient right to resist the despotism of anything without a brand label. Perhaps that’s my problem, i’m not with the programme.
I think you’re all forgetting that the Scots kick ass at Elephant Polo.
Re: M. Hicks:
Fucking in Paris doesn’t necessarily make the fucking any better. If the fucking is good in Paris, it can be good elsewhere too, and sometimes even better if that elsewhere has helpfully wrought iron bedsteads.
If the fucking is bad, all the Paris in the world can’t make it good. With or without wrought iron bedsteads.