Here's a video of Boris Johnson.

Here is a still from that video.

“They are trying to restrain me from saying this…”

He then goes on to say that he can’t believe that its correct, but if it is correct that the BBC is saying that they will not sing the words of Land Of Hope and Glory and Rule Britannia as they traditionally do at the end of Last Night Of The Proms, (obviously, he doesn’t really mean that the BBC won’t sing the words - but The Proms are organised by the BBC…) - there then follows the kind of linguistic hard turn that doesn’t really translate to the written word where he gets to the point that he’s dying to get off his chest - which doesn’t really seem to actually have anything to to with the BBC or Last Night of the Proms but as good an excuse as any to say what he really feels;

I think it’s time we stopped our cringing embarrassment about our history, about our traditions, and about our culture, and we stopped this general fight of self-recrimination and wetness. I wanted to get that off my chest.

Now, I really personally couldn’t care less about the Last Night of the Proms, or what songs they sing. Covering yourself in flags and singing songs about the Empire isn’t something that I’m going to get upset about - but I can guarantee that there will always be something on another channel that I’d rather watch. I wouldn’t go so far as to call it ‘cringing embarrassment’ about its existence, but I’m pretty sure that if I was in the room at the time then thats pretty much how I’d be feeling about this particular tradition.

The thing that I’m slightly baffled by is that this is the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, whose party won the largest majority in the House of Commons since 1987, with 44% of votes – the highest share of the vote that any party has got since 1979. Sure, things have been pretty eventful since the end of last year, but he’s still at the start of a parliamentary term with a huge majority and the top job.

So, exactly who could it be that is “trying to restrain him” from saying this?

(The BBC? Dominic Cummings? The Cabinet? Conservative back benchers? The ‘liberal elite’? The monarchy? The Illuminati? “Them”?)

Or could it be that there isn’t actually anyone trying to stop Boris from expressing his feelings about the traditions and culture of the nation he is Prime Minister of? It certainly seems like an easy way to make supporters who agree with him feel like they aren’t a majority in power, but a minority under attack with something to fight for. It also seems like an easy way to take a debate about whether a singalong in a hall (missing an audience) is a good idea, and turn it into a polemic about… something else. (Tradition? Culture? National identity?)

Maybe even to start to get back to the pre-pandemic agenda of defunding the BBC?

Some Random Nerd