Don’t listen to the whingers – mostly merchant bankers and airline executives living in Notting Hill. Brexit really has given us our country back and we can now celebrate our great island story, freed from the influence of dodgy continentals. Everywhere you look there are signs that our great country is reasserting itself, and one hopes these trends will continue as we boldly return to the glory days of our lustrous past.
1. Jousting
English Heritage has led the way with its imaginative idea that jousting should return to the Olympics at the Tokyo Games in 2020. “We are being deadly serious,” says Lucy Hutchings, English Heritage’s head of projects. “It is an incredible spectator sport, a really fascinating thing to watch. The skill of the knight and the horses make it a great thing to witness. We absolutely believe it deserves its place at the Olympic table.” What a splendid idea, redolent of a time when men were men and getting your head knocked off by a lance was a noble pursuit. Forget tennis and golf – namby-pamby modern activities that no true sportsperson would indulge in. Jousting should symbolise the new Britain. “We’d have a very good chance of doing well in the Olympics,” says Hutchings. At the very least we should finish above Iceland.
2. The Tudors
Part of the reason Brexit Britain wants to revive jousting is that we are excited by the idea of the Tudors, as Wolf Hall and the endless TV series featuring Tudor life demonstrate. The 16th century saw the birth of the modern English state – confident, expansionist, acquisitive. There were no questions of pooling sovereignty with dodgy foreigners. Instead, when challenged, we would conquer them, waging war with France and Scotland and taking over most of Ireland. In Henry VIII and Elizabeth I, we had leaders who had no truck with opposition. Judging from her ruthless cabinet overhaul, Theresa May looks to be of the same mould. Promising.
3. Naval power
How marvellous that the parliamentary vote to commission the next generation of nuclear-armed submarines should coincide with the sparkling refurbishment of Henry VIII’s favourite warship, the Mary Rose. There could be no better demonstration of the continuities in British naval greatness across the centuries. Yes the Mary Rose sank, in a battle being waged against the devious French, but the ship had given decades of doughty service and stands as an emblem of the British bulldog spirit. The millions spent on the Mary Rose’s restoration and the £205bn devoted to Trident are each, in their own way, investments in Britain’s unique place in the world.
4. Grammar schools
Conservative MP Graham Brady, chairman of the 1922 committee, is leading the Tory charge for the return of grammar schools. “Mrs May has a great opportunity to sweep away silly ideological hang-ups and embrace educational models that are proven to work,” he wrote this week. “Grammar schools are not a silver bullet, but they can make an important contribution.” Quite so. Our ultimate aim in Brexit Britain may be to return to 1522 (though perhaps without the bear-baiting and recurrent outbreaks of the Black Death), but we have to start somewhere and the home counties c1952 will do for starters.
5. Homegrown England managers
The Football Association has ignored the modern obsession with sophisticated foreign managers in sharp suits and designer spectacles and taken the welcome step of appointing an Englishman to manage the England team. “Big” Sam Allardyce will be the ideal representative of Brexit Britain. Brought up in a council house in Dudley and the son of a policeman, Big Sam is a world away from the money-obsessed aesthetes who dominate the modern game. With his ceaseless gum-chewing, no-nonsense attitude – he was a famously direct tackler in his playing days – and love of route-one football, he will embody the honesty and earthy humour of the new (ie old) Britain. Forget the hapless Roy Hodgson, with his five languages and love of Milan Kundera. Big Sam’s approximate relationship with one language – English – and his acceptance of the unbearable heaviness of being will serve us well as we seek to win a trophy some time in the middle of the millennium.
6. Holidays at home
Staycations are in. Now that the pound is making the Zimbabwean dollar look like a stable currency, Brits are abandoning their traditional summer hols in the Mediterranean and opting to stay at home. Ukip strongholds Frinton and Walton-on-the-Naze are proving especially popular as we revert to the much-loved bucket-and-spade holidays we enjoyed as children, eating tubs of cockles while sheltering from the drizzle, playing bingo in seedy amusement arcades and taking Thermos flasks and egg sandwiches on to the beach in the brief breaks in the rain. Glorious.
7. No third runway at Heathrow
The drop in foreign travel means there is no longer any need for a third runway at Heathrow. Indeed, it is questionable whether we need the second runway any more, and moves are afoot to convert it to a national centre for morris dancing, which is likely to see an upsurge in coming years. There may also be space for arenas set aside for jousting, archery and other knightly pursuits.
8. Great British food
Forget pasta and hummus and all that foreign muck, proper food is making a comeback. Sales of capons, which gourmets say are far tastier than chicken, are predicted to rise, though whether we will revert to eating swans remains a mute (sorry, moot) point.
9. Newspapers
The rise in the sales of newspapers has been a healthy byproduct of the referendum and its aftermath. Social media is so yesterday, and we can henceforth look forward to buses and trains packed with people silently buried in their papers.
10. Nostalgia
The return of the Spice Girls, racism, Labour schisms … OK, some of the retro trends we are experiencing have downsides. But we have to take the rough with the smooth. Brexit Britain is going to be a beautiful and endlessly fascinating thing. Just enjoy it.
