The last week has seen a collective sense of joy and pride running through our nation at the stunning victories and personal triumphs of Britain’s athletes at the Rio Olympics.
The success of so many of our most talented people has been achieved by their sheer determination to win, the support of their families and friends throughout the years, the support of countless coaches, medics, sport scientists and therapists and the financial security offered by the National Lottery, government and individual donors.
Our country, a small island nation of 65 million people on the edge of Europe is, at least for now, second in the Olympic medal table. Only the United States, whose population is about five times the UK’s, is ahead of us. It is quite something.
Here's the medal table after day 11.
50 medals makes it the most successful ever overseas Games for GB! #Rio2016 pic.twitter.com/42pjTplepH
— BBC Sport (@BBCSport) August 17, 2016
It is an example of the brilliance of Britain. It is a testament to the individuals and their teams but also of something in our national character and culture – a desire to succeed against the odds, a drive to do yourself and your nation proud. The way so many of our winners have sung our national anthem, worn our Union Jack, talked about their pride in being British has been a wonderful example of patriotism and nationalism.
Our success has also exemplified the type of Britain I believed we were and would continue to be when I argued we should leave the European Union.
I did not fall under the spell of negativity spread by the Remainers. Britain is too small, they said, to succeed. They claimed we would be swallowed up in a world economy waiting to tear us apart. We couldn’t survive outside of the EU according to Nick Clegg, Peter Mandelson and a large number of Labour MPs like Owen Smith – plus more than half of the current Tory cabinet.
The Brexiteers have jumped the shark. My article for today's @standardnews https://t.co/uQEwGwbhjq
— Nick Clegg (@nick_clegg) May 23, 2016
These people fail to recognise the brilliance of Britain and the achievements we have made in sport, science, business and a culture of peace and rule of law developed over centuries. Instead, they plot to overturn the greatest democratic exercise in a generation and prevent Britain leaving the EU.
In the House of Lords, selfish individuals like Patience Wheatcroft vow to use its powers to thwart a democratic vote. The Labour Party seeks to hold a new referendum. Delay, a favoured tactic of the British establishment, is utilised to push back invoking Article 50 and leaving the EU until after 2019. Law firms purporting to champion legal freedom take cases to the courts so that they can block a democratic decision and enslave 17 million people in their world view.
Nearly a century ago George Orwell wrote that “England was a land of snobbery and privilege ruled by the old and the silly”. In many ways the ruling class has changed, but their inveterate snobbery, their innate privilege and their sheer uncompromising arrogance and deceit remain.
England, indeed Britain, is now ruled largely by the selfish and the conceited. The ruling class believes it is more intelligent than its inferiors, who just don’t understand the EU. The ruling class believes it has better taste, is more cultured, and is more sophisticated than those who “just don’t get the benefits of open door migration”. If you don’t appreciate the benefits of open-door migration, you must be racist, xenophobic or simply ignorant, according to those who inhabit this metropolitan bubble. And the left wing intelligentsia is no better, with its flabby intellectual arguments for remaining in the EU which simply support the corporatist control of people.
The Olympics will soon be over. Proud Britons will cheer their superstars home. A new generation will begin or continue their journey for glory. Students will leave university and invent great things, entrepreneurs will build businesses, families will grow, flags will be flown, people will holiday in Britain and abroad.
Ordinary people believe in the greatness of our nation. It’s time for the British intelligentsia to stop its obsession with all things European and start to be proud of Britain, too.
