Proud to be British

I’m proud to be British. I look back on our achievements as a nation and feel a sense of pride that ‘we’ invented that, or fought for that, or lent a helping hand. And I know just about enough history to know that as well as doing some good in the past, we’ve carried out some pretty despicable things as well. There’s good, there’s bad, I’m not saying they cancel each other out, I’m just saying there’s a ledger with entries on both sides which I understand. But I do remain proud because I hope that as we progress as a nation, we can look back on all of the good and bad historical stuff and say ‘let’s do something better.’

With that sense of optimism in mind that as a nation we’ll do better stuff in the future, we come to the 80th memorial celebrations of D-Day. Something we can reflect on and work hard to ensure that it doesn’t have to happen again. That day where those brave lads crossed the channel and stormed the beaches in France against the Nazis. Along with many other nations, a massive event that Britain can and should be proud of. And as a patriot, I’m bloody proud of it as well. My eyes well up sometimes of the tales of the heroes who fell in that confrontation and the decreasing amount of living veterans who are still here to tell their stories of that harrowing time. I’m not sure I would have been so brave.

I think generally we’re all proud. And so is our Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak. He was proud to attend the ‘British events’ and speak to the ‘British veterans’ but when it came to the international events, he scarpered back home to pre-record an interview with ITV. Cue uproar. And quite rightly. This charlatan left early to do a party political interview, instead of doing his fucking job of representing me and you at all of the D-Day memorial celebrations. He left Davey Cameron there to be our representative. Not only is this bone-headed and disrespectful, I think that our Prime Minister has not learnt from this bit of history.

What struck me when Sunak was apologising was how often the word British came up. He was very adamant that he met all of the British veterans and went to all of the British events. In one six minute interview he said the word British six times. This led me to believe that Sunak had not learnt from our history. We didn’t storm the Normandy beaches alone as a British nation. We had help from many other nations and that is what we can be proud of. Our cooperation and coordination with other nations to organise a mass landing of troops to beat the Nazis. We worked with others and with their help we can all be proud of this thing that ‘we’ did.

And it galls me that the person who is meant to be representing me, seemingly has no sense of what it is we as British people should be proud of:

We stood up, with others and saw off a bully as the underdog.

I don’t know if I can compose a more British sentence. But Sunak doesn’t seem to comprehend that without anyone else we wouldn’t have achieved this victory. His viewpoint has narrowed so much that in his opinion Britain must stand alone and we can scrub the little bits of history where we needed help from other nations. Rishi Sunak is British, but his political views, his chosen ideology, means that he simply can’t comprehend that sometimes we need to work with others. And Thor forbid that he has a photo with him and other foreign leaders. O and he wants teenagers to ‘volunteer’ for national service when he couldn’t stick it out for a day. *shrug*