Gordon is a Moron

I'm just dashing this off before running the old Union flag up my newly installed flagpole...

GB - the man not the concept - the chief architect of the New Labour economics, the guy who wrote the cheque for the Iraq War, and the man who has spent a good part of his political career combatting the perceived threat of the people of Scotland's desire for self-determination, has now come out with a real PR blooper.

Yes its Britain Day, scheduled on the cheap on Remembrance Sunday (after all its not actually worth giving people an actual day off!) Lie back and think of Britain. What springs to mind? For Gordon, Britain = "liberty, tolerance, inclusion and fair play". For me, sadly, it's more Harry Stanley than Prince Harry, more regal subjugation than civil rights. More cultural oppression than Cool Britannia. More Brits Out than Brit Pop. We need, Gordon says, "a clear view of what being British means and how you define national identity for the modern world".

Well quite.

I can't help thinking of 'East Angular' and Extraordinary Rendition. I try and forget Impeach Blair and end up remembering Blair Peach.

I'm not really one for flags, but the one our putative leader wants us to celebrate is forever associated with the last battle on British soil, the slave trade of the eighteeenth century, the gun-boat diplomacy of the nineteenth and the far-right of the 20th.

Most disappointed of all today will be the remaining vestiges of the Labour Party (voters and some actual remaining members) who cling to the belief that Brown is (somehow - I know this is an incredulous thought) the saviour. Somehow he is to bring things round to some 'core values'. This is willful ignorance.

Remember its not just Raith Rovers he funds, its Trident II and his chums neo-imperliast escapades. There's always a point where one political guard crumbles. It's the moment when the clapping at the back of the Ceuascescu audience turns to jeers. For Blairism it was when Campbell stumbled into Channel 4 News off the leash. This is Brown's pre-governmental gaff, a desperate sign of power-lust betrayed by this terrible cultural own-goal.

In a wonderfully revealing article in yesterday's times, Minette Marin writes of this tragi-comedy unfolding before us:

"Meanwhile Scots feel more Scottish and less British than at any time since 1707, according to some surveys, led astray, possibly, by films such as Braveheart...("Doh! I saw a film I wanna change da constitution!"- Ed) ...This is obviously unfair, as is the fact that more taxpayers' money goes to Scotland, per head, for public services than in England, following the old Barnett formula. Devolution has only made this long-standing injustice feel worse. In response, a feeling of English separatism is growing; the English hardly need Scotland and Wales and would be much freer and richer without them." (sic - Ed)

Read Minette Marin's words of economic wisdom here...

As New Labour conjures up nuclear power plants across Scotland, don't expect an outbreak of Jacks being unfurled on the back lawns of Ayrshire, Argyll, Glasgow or Aberdeen.

3 comments

"You cannot sustain a national identity just because someone wants to be national leader."
- Alex Salmond

left by Pa Broon on 17 January 2006

Nothing new from what Tom Nairn calls the departure-lounge elite, those who have bought into an imperial sovereignty.

left by Delescluze on 17 January 2006

Scottish Parliament Motion S2M-3824 Fiona Hyslop: Britain Day Proposal
— That the Parliament notes Gordon Brown MP's proposals for a British
Day to celebrate issues of British identity which reflects more his
aspiration to be leader of the British state than an understanding of
issues of identity in Scotland; regrets that the Labour Party supports
a national day for the state of Britain but has rejected a national
day for the nation of Scotland by not approving the St Andrew's Day
Bill; particularly regrets any suggestion that a day of sombre
remembrance should be hijacked for such a purpose; notes that many
countries' national day of celebration in fact marks the end of
British rule from the days of empire, now diminished; notes that
Britain is a political state originally established out of specific
economic and political self-interest, and further notes that, in order
for young Scots to understand and appreciate their own identity, it is
essential that the history of Scotland and a Scottish world view of
events is taught as a discrete subject in our schools in order that Scots, including politicians, have a grasp of what economic, cultural
and political influences have forged the current nation of Scotland.

left by W. Wallace on 17 January 2006