Big Ben won’t bong for Brexit, or possibly will, or won’t, or whatever, and anyway the Festival of Brexit will go ahead to celebrate our bally Britishness because huzzah for Britain, huzzah, huzzah.
What absolute balderdash it all is.
I’ve been watching it with horror, as a person who is Scottish by identity, British by necessity, and European by inclination. It just doesn’t represent me, my views or my culture.
Frankly, I couldn’t care less if Big Ben never makes another sound, and I certainly don’t support the idea of spending a six-figure sum on arranging for it to herald the UK’s departure from the Common Market in some bizarre political statement. It that’s Britishness, I want nothing to do with it.
I’m sad to say the very idea of Britishness can be confusing. Such as it is, it’s built from disparate aspects of its constituent nations, down to its very flag. That means it has always been a jigsaw that doesn’t quite fit together, in my opinion.
However, in others’ opinion, there is little difference between Britishness and Englishness. To be British resembles a metaphorical Eton mess of Big Ben, the Lambeth Walk, leather-on-willow and half-remembered quotes from Paradise Lost, with a token mention of English regions (some cheese rolling down a hill, perhaps?), plus some bagpipes, a leek and probably the Giant’s Causeway or something even though Northern Ireland is part of the United Kingdom but not Great Britain, officially.
The English tabloids may try to suggest there is a defined British identity and they are allowed to define it, but that’s just not true, even if Major-General Cholmondeley-Smythe (Rtd), Home Counties, writes a letter to the editor to agree.
It never existed, even when invaders really did threaten our shores and our forebears set aside their differences to resist them.
And that’s the problem. The idea that we should celebrate the day the UK leaves the European Union is offensive to me and many others. Like Brexit, this misbegotten festival divides us, representing the worst of the squabbling factions that constitute a flawed country.
Ask not for whom Big Ben bongs. It bongs for thee, Britain, and not in a good way.
