Rule Britannia’s alienating, says top Labour MP

TO many it is a stirring patriotic anthem conjuring up images of Britain’s long and proud history.

But Rule, Britannia! can feel ‘alienating’ to others, according to Labour culture spokesman Thangam Debbonaire.

The frontbencher said she wanted culture to be ‘accessible to everyone’ and it was ‘a good debate for us to be having’.

She was responding to a question about the view of cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason that playing the song at the Last Night of the Proms would make Britons feel uncomfortable.

Ms Debbonaire, MP for Bristol West since 2015, said ‘a lot of people’ would agree with him.

The musician, 24, who performed at the wedding of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex in 2018, suggested earlier this year that Rule, Britannia! could be replaced with British folk music.

Ms Debbonaire, in an interview with The Spectator’s Women with Balls podcast, welcomed the debate about the tradition of playing the song based on the 1740 poem by James Thomson.

She added: ‘It’s not my favourite bit of music. And the Proms is a fantastic institution and it’s the world’s greatest music festival.

‘It’s a decision for the people who run the Proms and it shouldn’t be politicians who tell people how to run cultural events.

‘I think for a lot of people that feels like a very sort of British moment, which I think has to be respected as well, but for a lot of people, as Sheku Kanneh-Mason said, it will feel alienating.

‘As I want the Proms – I want culture – to be accessible to everyone, I think it’s a good debate for us to be having.’

However Tory deputy chairman

Jack Lopresti said: ‘It should come as no surprise that Labour are happy to run roughshod over our national traditions.

‘After all, this is the same party whose leader [Sir Keir Starmer] says his favourite piece of classical music was the EU’s anthem Ode to Joy.’

In 2020, the BBC was forced into a humiliating U-turn and brought back the singing of Rule, Britannia! at the Last Night of the Proms after planning to play an instrumental version.

A spokesman for Rishi Sunak said: ‘The Prime Minister is very clear that it should continue to be sung and proudly.’

Former minister Sir Jacob ReesMogg said the song was ‘uniting’ and ‘about the marvellous history of this country to which every British citizen belongs’.

He also told the Daily Telegraph: ‘The overwhelming majority of people are proud of Britain, proud of its history, and this is encapsulated in the very stirring words of Rule, Britannia!’