Ten years ago I was on the verge of being proud to be British. A few months later, I would be. Okay, there was a Conservative government in which some ambitious, unprincipled Lib Dems had taken jobs, but hey, 2012 was an Olympic year and the Olympics were in London.
We watched Danny Boyle’s epic opening ceremony, celebrating among other things our NHS which had begun to suffer at the hands of Cameron/Clegg austerity but thanks to 13 years of a government, a Labour government, that actually believed in it, it was still strong. We watched David Beckham on a speedboat on the Thames and James Bond at Buckingham Palace.
The face of the games was a black woman, Jessica Ennis, and the nation cheered when within half an hour she wrapped her heptathlon gold medal, a Briton Mo Farah, born in Somalia, won one of his gold medals and a ginger – A GINGER – called Greg Rutherford won his. The crowd even booed when chancellor George Osborne (one for the kids, there) presented a medal. The government was in the early stages of ripping the heart out of our public services and no one was even bothered about the EU. At last, we had something to be proud of. And now what have we got?
A government led, at least today, by a self-styled clown, a spoilt public schoolboy, who believes in nothing except himself. Boris Johnson, the least fit person to be prime minister in the history of the UK.
On the basis of his own personal ambition and literally nothing else, Johnson led the campaign for Britain to leave the EU. He didn’t believe in Brexit, but then he doesn’t believe in anything. If he thought remain would have taken him to Number 10, he’d have backed it. But he lied. Johnson always lies. It’s what he does.
Now the main man has been caught out lying once too often. Or rather many times too often. As Covid struck, Johnson’s government handed out billions of pounds to its friends. He awarded his friends honours they did nothing to deserve. And he hosted parties in the Downing Street garden.
In a last desperate effort to survive, Johnson’s spivs send out a buffoon like Nadine Dorries to say she is abolishing the BBC. Priti Patel announces the Royal Navy will be deployed to sink the rickety vehicles packed with desperate refugees crossing the channel, many of whom are black, just like star Olympians. Today, Johnson will announce the end to all Covid restrictions the day after the announcement that today’s death toll is the highest in 11 months. This is distraction politics on steroids.
There was no legacy from 2012. If anything, we are more divided than ever. Johnson’s legacy will be a broken country where the rich have got richer and the poor have been left to rot. A country that was once the envy of the world is now a laughing stock. A country dreaming of a sepia-tinted past which never happened.
If the Olympics happened today, Priti Patel would probably try to repatriate Mo Farah to Somalia, such is the change in our country.
Proud of Britain? There are still parts of it I am proud of, like the NHS and the BBC, but I am more embarrassed and angry about the direction in which our country is going, which is towards a hard right, tinpot, dictatorship where we have to do what we are told and never complain because otherwise we will go to jail.
The 2012 Olympics showed the world what we were. The 2022 version of Britain shows the world what we are now. It’s like we’re in a different world. In many ways we are.
