Worst Opinion of the Week: The 'Woke Left' Are Banning 'Rule Britannia!'

Story: “Rule, Britannia!” and “Land of Hope and Glory” were performed orchestrally at BBC’s Last Night of the Proms. The decision was in compliance with government guidelines to stop the spread of Covid-19, which clearly state that “people should avoid singing, shouting and raising voices.”
Reasonable take: Seems good.
Brain rot: The woke left are attacking British national pride by trying to ban “Rule, Britannia!”, so I’m going to film myself singing it and put it online.

This week, and probably for the first time in modern history, everyone was talking about Last Night of the Proms. Conductor Dalia Stasevska found herself in the crossfires of the culture wars after the BBC’s decision for “Rule Britannia” and “Land of Hope and Glory” to be performed orchestrally – in line with government guidelines to stop the spread of COVID-19 – was reported as a “politically motivated” decision.

Stasevska says her family have received threats over the controversy, which snowballed after several UK publications ran news stories claiming the BBC was discussing dropping the songs “in the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement” over concerns of associations with colonialism and slavery.

Despite this “anti-British” cultural conspiracy theory being quickly debunked, we still had to bear witness to a perpetually rattled right-wing portraying an orchestral rendition of some songs as the BBC pandering to BLM activists.

Unsurprisingly, Boris Johnson used this opportunity to pipe up and called for an end to “cringing embarrassment” over British history, as if it was a nation-wide case of us all remembering the time we called a barista “dad”. Johnson also accused the BBC of “wetness”, saying he’d been advised not to speak out on the matter, but “wanted to get that off my chest.”

At what point of Britain’s never-ending Cirque du Soleil of Poppy remembrance, flag flaunting, saint-shaping of Wintson Churchill and doe-eyed tales of colonial rule would you say we regularly “cringe” at our history? If merely acknowledging it makes you uncomfortable, or shudder, there’s a good reason for it.

Guido Fawkes then encouraged people to purchase the single of “Rule Britannia” on iTunes, like it was some sort of fuck you to an X-Factor Christmas single called “Woke Marxist Agenda”. Nigel Farage posted an old video of himself joyfully belting out a rendition of the tune and, arguably most pitiful of the lot, talkRADIO host Mike Graham and his guests filmed themselves warbling out “Land of Hope and Glory” while waving an impractically large Union flag.

Even prominent BBC political presenter Andrew Neil took to shit stirring the pot of misinformation about his employers, sharing a John Keiger article in The Spectator about the “BBC’s ‘Rule Britannia’ censorship” and how the songs are actually “popular hymns of resistance to fascist invasion”.

Neil, unsatisfied, further dipped his hand into this demonic chamber of discourse to cascade more festering chum to the masses by tweeting: “If Britannia had not ruled the waves there would never have been a Royal Navy strong enough to abolish the slave trade, intercepting 1,600 ships and freeing 150,000 Africans while sustaining major casualties.”

The British truly have an unrivalled propensity to displace historical fact with myth. Even our mythology isn’t even safe from Anglo embellishment, with every modern telling of Arthurian legend seemingly portrayed as a bunch of English knights fighting against… the Anglo-Saxons?

There’s nothing that cannot be appropriated, stolen, bastardised, or bare-faced lied about as long as the delusion of Britain being the liberators and saviours of all humankind is maintained. How can we earnestly spin ourselves as the heroes of the slave trade when we forged and profiteered off it for centuries?

It’s the same duplicitous bullshit revisionists spout about us “giving India the railways” while omitting the only reason we “gave” India the railway (i.e. forced them to construct it) was in order to plunder $45 trillion of their wealth.

Can’t we just face facts, as a nation, for once, and acknowledge that “Rule, Britannia!” doesn’t even slap? There’s a reason every cunt can perform “Angels” by Robbie Williams in immaculate acapella at a drop of a hat and only four percent of Brits know the lyrics to “Rule, Britannia!” Beyond the celebratory lyrics about how Britons “never will be slaves” because they are the enslavers by “Heaven’s command”, it’s interchangeable with compositions created for van hire adverts on regional radio.

I don’t know why people are slagging off the Proms’ rendition of “Land of Hope and Glory” either, it genuinely works better as an instrumental because by the time we get to the A. C. Benson lyrics of “Land of hope and glory, mother of the free. How shall we extol thee, who are born of thee?” you’re left floundering. Are you trying to tell me any fucker was speaking like this in 1902, the year it was written? A mere 12 years before World War I and we’re pretending people were talking like a Shakespearian cardinal. Simply get fucked.

And if some cunt can direct me to this “Land of Hope and Glory” please, be my guest. I can’t remember reading any Dickensian novel about Victorian England and thinking “wow, this place sounds like it ruled to be poor in.”

The only thing these ditties confirm for me is that British exceptionalism remains unblemished by time. I’d probably go as far to argue that while Britain carving out the largest empire known to man through murderously traversing the seas was bad, singing about these long gone “glory days” like some pissed-up bore in the pub living vicariously through fantasises of his great-great-grandad bayonetting an agricultural farmer is somehow worse, just because of how pathetic it is.

At least one of funny outcome of this whole debacle has been seeing completely shook Brits posting videos of themselves smoking stogies and listening to these old, shit tunes as some sort of “own” that triggers the “anti-fascists”.

I wonder what will be pulled from the tombola of fabricated demands by Black Lives Matter activists next – “Anti-fascists demands Brits stop enjoying tea and biscuits because of its former links to colonialism”. The idea that people concerned with racial inequality and violence are preoccupied with the Proms, or any of this shit, is farcical to say the least.

So, while the economies rests firmly on its arse, tens of thousands are needlessly dead and the A-level mess is still fresh in most people’s minds along with a litany of other government failures, the media is once again consolidating to prove that the Tories are the guardians of British culture – even if they shit the bed bi-weekly – by insisting that anyone left of Enoch Powell wishes to make Morris dancing illegal.

It feels as if this is the only political area the Tories still have unflinching support, so let us all be prepared for this diarrhoea of faux outrage to flow like the Thames until the next election.

@MULLETFANNEO