Splits that endanger the greatest prize of all
THIS column is not about Brexit. Pinky promise. Quite frankly, I’m at the stick my fingers in my ears, hide in the basement and sing la-la-la until it’s over stage when it comes to the whole sorry spectacle.
But since it turns out Brexit is actually having an impact on the way we live (who knew? If only there had been some sort of clue), I have noticed that it has changed the way I feel.
Not about the big things, of course. My passion for family, friends, work and an easy-on-the-soda-water Aperol spritz remains mercifully undimmed. It’s how I feel about nationhood. About being British.
Cecil Rhodes said once that to be born English was ‘to win first prize in the lottery of life’, but I can’t say I’ve ever agreed. To be British, that thing that’s greater than the sum of its parts, that encompasses the wildness of the Western Isles and the high hedges of Devon, the works of Robert Burns and Dylan Thomas, of Henry Raeburn and Maggi Hambling, that’s the real prize.
To be British always seemed to me an enormous stroke of good fortune, a lucky break for all concerned.
Ha! What a fool I was. Because right now, it’s impossible to feel anything other than embarrassed to hail from this once-great sceptred isle.
BRITAIN has become a laughing stock. A basket case. To be British right now is to embody a peculiar national cringe, as we watch our politicians do what they apparently do best now: mess everything up.
As one who has always supported the Union, I have felt alienated within Scotland for some time. Shunted to one side by a government determined to pursue independence at any cost, it has sometimes been difficult to embrace my , if only because I feel, at times, left out.
The independence movement has always felt like a clique, a club with an ‘if you’re not with us you’re against us’ mentality. I have been made to feel, as a Union supporter, as though I do not love my country as much as those who want independence.
Now, in a Britain that is equally
divided, with not one political party left I could imagine voting for and a Westminster that seems further and further away, I feel something similar. An isolation. A distancing.
Don’t worry. I’m not about to make a grand volte-face. I am not currently filling out my SNP membership form and making grandiose statements about ‘the people of Scotland’.
And it’s not about blame, either. Let’s face it, if we were to start listing everyone to blame for the mess we’re in now, this column would stretch all the way to the sports pages.
But I am concerned. About where Britain is headed, and the Union, and where we, those people who identify ourselves as British as well as English, Scottish, Welsh or Northern Irish, will end up.
There is precious little to be proud of right now in a country that seems determined to eat itself from the inside, no matter how many grandiose statements about ‘pluck and nerve’ the Prime Minister makes from behind a podium. What happens next, arguably what has happened already, will impact this nation and its people for years to come.
And those of us who don’t have a seat in the House of Commons can only watch on in agonised frustration, cringing quietly, and wondering when that first prize turned into the wooden spoon.