Come on!

Take it or leave it is the Prime Minister’s latest and allegedly last offer to Brussels and the remain side are apoplectic. How DARE he try and achieve what Theresa May’s mob spent three years frustrating? How DARE he be popular and furthermore how DARE he shrug off every assault on his character, his competence and his leadership and emerge after each attack stronger in the polls? It’s a curious thing, isn’t it, the British tendency to side with the underdog and how typical is it that those who would seek to deny democracy appear to understand this so poorly.

Eton and Oxford educated, Boris Johnson follows a long line of the privileged who have traditionally risen to the top job; raised to rule and resented for it. But tolerated, for, no matter how much your heart tugs you towards socialism a la Jeremy Corbyn, in your head you simply have to recognise that the collective has never achieved the advances gained under benign autocracy. Socialism tears itself apart every time as it tries to hammer manifestly round pegs into stubbornly square holes. All men are not created equal and to pretend otherwise takes energy which could be more usefully expended in more pragmatic pursuits.

We still have a monarch, albeit in neutered form, but nevertheless loved in a way that a president never would be. Despite decades of bitching from a vocal pro-republican minority the British are, on the whole, perfectly happy to be subjects of the crown and subject to the rule of common law. Truly British people get this in a way that converts to the European dream may never comprehend. Why would we wish to give up centuries of more or less happy servility for an illusory participation in a far less forgiving system where you will be punished for having a different opinion even as others, who are genuinely different, even aberrant, are fêted for their ‘vibrancy’?

We know our place, here in the UK and generally we are content to be slightly grumpy. ‘Mustn’t grumble’ doesn’t mean we can’t grumble and be obstinately pessimistic and less than effervescent in our discourse with others. Hell, we like to grumble and bitch and moan,  but then we generally crack on and keep paying our taxes. And we are more cheerful than we might appear; we just don’t like to make a song and dance about it. And perhaps this is part of the problem with the bright young things of the remain camp? In their eagerness to not be British they have gone out of their way to adopt suspiciously non-British attitudes to life and politics. (Maybe this is why they are so bloody angry all the time?)

Ignore it. It will go away...

And wasn’t Brexit all about Britishness after all? So, Boris saying like it or lump it to Brussels is exactly what we want to hear. It reminds us of our upbringing when we were taught that we can’t have everything, but if we work hard enough we can have many things, which is entirely at odds with the socialistic promise of jam for everybody and eternal happiness under the auspices of the EU’s supreme rule. We Brits love a challenge – although we may outwardly say otherwise – and there’s nothing we like more than a damn good ultimatum. So, come on, Brussels, have a go. If you think you’re hard enough…