Britishness?

What exactly is Lord Goldsmith up to? He's currently in charge of some committee set up by Gordon Brown to review Britishness. That in itself is very un-British. Lord Goldsmith is hardly the right guy to pontificate on the matter. He was up late, burning the midnight oil, trying to legalise Tony Blair's dodgy dossier on Iraq, so anything he touches could well be suspect.

He's grumbling about the wording of the National Anthem, he's looking the Union Flag over, and he suggesting we have a "statement of values" about what it means to be British. What a lot of nonsense. On top of all that, he thinks newly arrived immigrants should have a "mentor" to help them settle. Is that a subtle way of putting them off coming in the first place?

All this was started because we have a part-time MP job-sharing with an MSP who happens to be Prime Minister and feels uneasy being a Scot running the English but having passed off most of his constituency interests in a shabby constitutional deal. And it resulted in Alex Salmond getting all chirpy as First Minister.

They should know that being British is not about all this but about just being oneself. If that isn't good enough, why is half the world queuing up to get in?

Posted in: Britishness,Gordon Brown,Lord Goldsmith