IT’S the Queen I feel for most. Next year, her 95th, she was entitled to expect a break in her lengthy toil in the service of the nation. Perhaps to be left alone in her curlers and baffies to watch Corrie or have her besties round for a chicken fried rice (direct from the Duchy of Cornwall) and a game of dominoes. A few giggly glasses of the Harveys even and a wee sleepover? No chance of that now. The UK Government’s planned, post-Brexit jamboree of Britishness will start with fervent intent in January and continue ad nauseam and without limit of time. New coinage has already been minted and Theresa May served us notice of a festival in those golden days when she was prime minister. The Queen, with sinking heart must know already she’ll be expected to drag herself again to her duty. Can’t we just leave the poor woman alone to her corgis and her afternoon naps? Once more she’ll be needed to chivvy the younger royals into conjugal action: it wouldn’t be a proper festival of Britishness without a royal birth or two. And could you maybe make one last trip to Australia to get that trade deal over the line, Your Majesty? Just a teeny one? And Canada too; just to let them know who’s still the boss? No deluded celebration of British greatness is complete either without some kind of militaristic bristling. In less enlightened times the cuspy locution to “frighten the French” was deployed by the post-war generation to indicate something fearful but not overly so. And at the weekend the Royal Navy was put on notice to threaten a jolly good thrashing for any delinquent French fishermen in the event of a no-deal Brexit if they threatened the UK’s expanded fisheries. A couple of years ago, I suggested that immediately following Brexit Boris Johnson’s Colonel Blimp government would seek a muscly adventure somewhere as a means of showing that Britain still ruled the waves, or at least those with a few shoals of fish who had given their piscatorial loyalties to the Queen. Perhaps we could establish how long the fish have been jouking around the North Sea?

Thus, we could measure their Britishness lest those wily French try to prove that they’d spent their formative years in French waters. Les Gills Jeunes, non? I was perhaps taking some liberties with the suggestion, so I was a little astounded to learn that the Royal Navy has been battening down the hatches for several months now. It’s been reported that Michael Gove, Captain Pugwash re-incarnated, led an exercise where the Royal Navy practised boarding French fishing boats in the English Channel. One source told the Sunday Times: “One of his biggest worries is a new Battle of Trafalgar in the Channel with clashes between French and English fishing fleets and the navy and French fishermen.” Has anyone checked up on Jacob Rees-Mogg’s recent whereabouts? Perhaps we could have a re-enactment of the Don Pacifico Incident in 1850 when Foreign Secretary Lord Palmerston sent the Navy to the port of Piraeus to shake Britain’s fist at the Greeks for chibbing the British subject, the aforementioned (and Gibraltar-born) Mr Pacifico in Athens. Last year, Gavin Williamson raised the UK’s preparedness for war to defcon Malkie by threatening to send aircraft carriers to engage China in the South China Sea. Mr Williamson once told Russia “to go away and shut up” and later threatened them for “flouting international law”. Mr Williamson serves in the cabinet of a country which sold £1.3 billion worth of weapons to repressive regimes in 2019. As the UK embraces splendid isolation we can look forward to a lot more of this and it will become more pervasive with each passing month. As the consequences become apparent of our chaotic divorce from the EU – a transaction in which the UK was entirely without class and dignity throughout – there will be a need to revive the bread and circuses of 18th-century Empire. Shares in those lucky firms who get to manufacture paper poppies will soar. So much so, that those sweetie and agricultural feed companies who amazingly turned their hands to manufacturing PPE equipment will find that, by jove, they can make poppies too. As we speak, the BBC is already commissioning its regiment of military historians to make documentaries with titles like This Sceptr’d Isle or We Stand Alone. Any history student currently preparing for finals at a half-decent university (preferably, Oxford or Cambridge) and who can walk and talk at the same time in front of a camera might be advised to specialise in British military history for a career as a television historian surely awaits. As this red, white and blue pantomime unfolds the Scottish Government should cling to Napoleon’s maxim of never interrupting the enemy when he’s making a mistake. Right now senior SNP people are focusing on being good little Europeans. Like a teacher’s pet eager to show they’re fit enough to be become a class monitor and for the badge that goes with it the SNP is eager to show Brussels how well-behaved Scotland is. Let’s drop the pretence. All we require to do right now is step well back and permit the UK Government to continue making a horse’s fundament of itself with its contrived union jackery. As this Britanniafication proceeds Scotland simply needs to continue being, well … Scottish. Just remain true to who we are and drop all this cosying up to the EU. Resist the urge to preach Scottish exceptionalism, drop the superlatives: the best little this; the greatest little that; the most equipped other. Be true to our edgy, irascible, curious and real selves. Have a genuine concern for the poor in our midst by addressing seriously the long-term deprivation that disfigures their communities. Continue to welcome those fleeing wars caused by UK speculation and adventurism. Have done with the politics of identity and ditch the neo-liberal, corporate chieftains who have a disproportionate influence in government. Independence will follow soon enough.

Our columns are a platform for writers to express their opinions. They do not necessarily represent the views of The Herald