Handing over the keys to the kingdom

There are times when I despair (and even for that matter get quietly angry) because of what we have become.

What we have become is not what we set out to be, and we have become this dreadful apology of a nation because we allowed the ones who didn't care to get the upper hand. The nation of Britain and all its myriad British peoples have became swamped by tides that threaten to wash away everything we are.

The British and their ways are being subjugated by the very people we trusted to help us. In trust we gave our so called 'leaders' and 'intellectuals' the keys to the kingdom and they slyly handed them over with one object in mind. They wanted to make themselves feel good, by lining their own nests and taking what they could while pretending they cared.

The keys to our islands and our ways were given away by people who had no right to do it. The keys  were ours; they belonged to the people of these islands and even the land itself. It is the kingdom, the nation, we crafted because it was best for us and ours. it is beautiful and rugged and breath-taking and comforting and reassuring in so many ways. It is ours. Or was.

Do not misunderstand me here. Britain isn't heaven on earth, as much as I might wish it to be. There are things we have done as a nation that have been far from great but there have also been times -- many times -- when we have done things that are pretty amazing and beneficial. For all our faults the people of these islands gave a lot to the world and even if the world didn't always make best use of the gifts and ideas, we did what we could to help.

On balance, I think Britain is in the plus side of the help/hinder equation.

Of course I am British, so I am biased. I was born in these islands good number of years ago and while I have been lucky to see some other parts of the world I am usually glad to come back here. yes, it rains and it's cold but there is something about this land that makes me feel okay. I have no doubt other people of other nations feel passionate about their lands, and good for them, because this is actually how it should be.

We also are an island and while everything is an island, one way or another even if it a very very big island with lots of countries (it struck me recently that if you land on the French coast you can, should you so wish, walk all the way to say North Korea. Not that I would, but there you go. It is possible.) we do have a way of looking at the world. Not always as history has shown with the best vision but the times we did outstanding things like Magna Carta and enabled people like Shakespeare and Newton to thrive and stood alone when all else around us seemed ready to fall puts us in a very unique position.

But somewhere along the line we said to the people who claimed they would guide us that we trusted them to do the right thing. But it was a misplaced trust for they failed. They failed us the British people. These people, who set themselves up as greater than the ordinary people, stopped listening to what we the people said, stopped liking who we were. Instead they listened to voices from other places, people with agendas far removed from ours.

These leaders set themselves up with our money and awarded themselves greater powers and greater amounts of money and sought more prestige and all the while plotted to hand us, the ordinary Brit, over to others who care only for their own power and prestige.

Look, I don't want to bring race into this though God knows everyone else does. We are white, because we are north European. It is how we are. We tolerate the cold and damp because, in a way, it is in our skin to do that. Our gods and our beliefs and our aims were shaped by what we are. It is how it is.

It isn't racist to be what you are. It isn't racist to see that what you are -- and in this it is to do with attitudes and beliefs and a willingness to be a unified people within these lands -- and why in many ways you have to be separate. There are times you have to say 'we stand alone' even as you say 'we can help.'

Being aware of what you are and what you have been and what you hope to be isn't hatred of others. Far from it because there is no point in hating what is. You may as well rail against the colour of sunlight for all the good that would do. The world is what it is, and its peoples are who they are and as such have their own lands and their own beliefs. So it goes. But what we are is what matters. It is who we are, who we have always been here.

But then somehow we said, 'we have a land and we have the keys to it' and we handed them over. We gave our trust and it was abused. Nakedly and flagrantly and with all the charm of snake oil salesmen (and women) our elected leaders took the keys and handed them over to others. Handed over to a faceless bureaucracy in Europe that would make laws for us while enjoying the privilege of not following them for themselves, given to a United Nations that promotes despots and tyrants and regimes that hate the West and who tell us we have to bow down to others. Or else.

Our leaders purred with self-appreciation and then eagerly danced to the tune of other people in other lands. And if they couldn't dance well enough they insisted we the people of these islands should dance too. Dance faster and more generously or suffer the wrath of those distant despots or face more laws to restrict and condition us.

These supposedly intelligent people were careless with what we gave them. They gave away our laws and our security and any feeling of self-worth we had. They trashed hope and replaced it with mind-numbing fear. They told us to be quiet and not express our views, that whatever we had to say counted for less than the rants of anti-Westereners. The leaders listened to the pretend concerns of people who knew nothing of the world, but had 'exciting ideas' that sounded far more fun than they really turned out.

These 'leaders' of ours told us we were worthless because of what we were in their eyes, and then they helped blame us for what we didn't do. They connived and plotted as one with doubtful people and did things behind our back, all for their own glory and not ours. Worse, they did it together as if they were friends with each other but not of us, the ones who 'freely' elected them. We were told by the elite we were worthless, inferior, that we owed the world a living. We had to accept what was alien to us because it sounded 'good' and 'worthwhile.' We were pushed to one side and then told we were guilty when we had not done anything wrong.

We were small and insignificant and the new order our leaders wanted would guarantee them more and make sure we had less.

If we did not berate ourselves and beat ourselves then we were failing, so the media helped our elite do it. No questions, no analysis, just a dog-like testicle-licking cravenness, pumping up 'threats' that were created to enhance power. There would be new laws and repression and regulations and guidelines that had to be slavishly adhered to, no matter what it cost. Anyway, money was free and plentiful for the ones at the top. More could be printed, just as more promises without value could be made. Taxes could be invented, new ways to take money created out of thin air. Or warm air.

So easy, so simple once you start. And you never had to say you were sorry when you made it to the top. all you had to do was say you would 'try harder' and you were 'proud to serve' and then carry on doing all you had done before.

Maybe it was our fault we went along with it all. It could be we as a people relaxed too much in the face of an extended peace. Maybe we thought that as war receded (though heaven knows it is never far away and in many ways it has been secretly brought into these islands from elsewhere) that life would get better. Maybe with it getting better we thought the intellectuals and the self-important elite at the top actually cared. Maybe we thought that common sense would prevail in all matters.

Perhaps we thought that our leaders would subdue their self-serving ways and would put Britain and the British first. For a while we thought that when our elected leaders and politicians talked to others it was to put our point of view across rather than listen to what others said, no matter how irrational or unsuited to our ways, and then wanted us to promise to obey.

We were wrong to think that the promises and all the words about caring for us were real, that they meant what they said in claiming they would serve Britain and its interests. They had the keys, on trust, and they handed them over so swiftly we couldn't keep up.

There will be an election in the next couple of years in these islands, though I have finally understood it makes little difference now how it turns out. Vote as you wish, you will get more of the same. The people of any party who will seek to get into Westminster will most of all want the money and the adulation and the craven support of a feeble-minded media in order to do nothing for the British people. There is a saying that the rich get powerful and the powerful get rich, and once I thought this applied to other places. Shitholes of countries with turgid, lazy and corrupt governments who run the UN and its ilk and while making their people suffer because they didn't really care. They were in it for what they could get.

Now I know it is true here too.

Oh, sure, you will hear fine words from our elite, carefully polished to accompany earnest expressions of care and compassion. They have been expertly trained to say it, how to present themselves nicely. But they will not act the way they say. They say one thing and think another. These people will act the way they think best for them and their small group of hangers-on though in truth these faithful, narrow-minded acolytes, who are also scrabbling for power and money and luxury, will be jettisoned as soon as convenient.

We now in these islands have a selfish leadership and we have had it for some time now. These smug people lied and schemed in order to be able to preen themselves and congratulate their image in a mirror crack'd from side to side. Worse, they pretended to be us, but couldn't wait to hand the keys to this kingdom over to someone else. Even if they did it with a flourish of heartfelt care and an anxious smile of reassurance, they handed them over all the same.

The trouble is, we may never get them back now.