History teaches us that when patriotism is defined not by what we are and what we do and achieve but solely by our rhetoric and our symbols it is shallow and worthless. You don’t solve a nation’s problems by putting out more flags. Or by creating phoney “Values” when all around us is moral turpitude, xenophobia, corruption and pompous jingoism.

Symbols can trivialise and be designed to cover up failure. The same with slogans. At a time when Britain has chosen a path of nationalist disconnection from the world to spout nonsense about “Global Britain” is intellectually bereft of logic.

Flag-waving is not in itself patriotic, it needs a context. I was in the Olympic Stadium when Jessica Ennis won her Gold Medal back in 2012 – she proudly displayed the Union Flag a few yards in front of me. I cheered myself hoarse along with tens of thousands of others. I was proud of her and very patriotic. That flag meant something. Nobody told Ennis to wave the flag, nor me to cheer.

Totalitarian states need symbols to reinforce their hegemony and their power. Whether the symbol is a hammer and sickle or a swastika. Confident nations may display their flags and symbols with genuine pride, not to boast but to celebrate. But what matters is not their flag and symbol but why they are confident – it usually comes from respect. Wearing a Stars and Stripes badge on his lapel as he dragged America into the reputational mire didn’t make Donald Trump a patriot.

You can’t buy respect by wittering on about “Queen and Country” , by singing “patriotic” songs about our “glorious past” and by a surfeit of flags. My personal patriotism is at a low ebb , unsurprisingly given the shallowness of the politics all around us. But it’s not dead, just sleeping. Give me a reason to be proud of my country again and I’ll cheer myself hoarse again. Actions speak louder than words. Or flags.

James Forsyth, embedded by the Government’s propaganda department in The Times, has yet another of his woefully unbalanced articles in that newspaper today. We wants us to take more risks, I kid you not.

A year into the biggest medical disaster to hit the world for more than one hundred years Britain is still blundering around in ignorance as Mr Forsyth’s characteristic parade of confusion shows. The problem is not risk aversion but a mindset stuck somewhere between insouciance and bravado. Do we know what we’re doing ? There are few signs that we do.

Empirical evidence is, or should be, the driver of decision making. Yes things have been handled better in Asia than here – most things are. But have we learned from that? Not much. A society that culturally matches ours closely, New Zealand, has handled the pandemic with skill, intelligence and leadership. Have we studied that in depth? Few if any signs that we have.

Arrogance along with the insouciance has been Britain’s downfall. A year ago the deadly threat of COVID was grossly underestimated here. When the Kiwis were taking rapid action we delayed and dithered. With deadly results. As we blathered with herd immunity claptrap others acted. Johnson was up there with Trump and Bolsonaro in his failures of judgment and action.

In truth herd immunity – a callous acceptance of genocidal level deaths – never went away. If you take that path then it requires mass vaccination – which is why this policy received such priority. If you want evidence that surreptitiously herd immunity was still the policy you need look no further than the speed and extent of implementing first dose vaccinations. We were told 20,000 deaths would be a “good result” – what does that make 130,000 ?

No country, other than Britain, has ignored the vaccine makers instructions over the gap between the first and second dose. These instructions were not serendipitous – they were based on empirical evidence. Science. Yet we’ve implied we’ve known better than the scientists and ignored them. Uniquely in the world. The result of this is yet to be seen.

We are still deep in the mire and there is zero credible evidence that a roadmap of gradual removal of grestrictions is appropriate. New cases are still happening in substantial numbers. Citizens are still dying. Of course we all want to return to normality but let’s at last be driven by reason and science not populist politics.

David Cameron seems to have got himself into a bit of trouble – see Danny Finkelstein in The Times today . At the risk of being pompous I would say that I have always had an inbuilt sense of right and wrong. This is not based on religious faith still less on any moral code but on a combination of education, nurture and common-sense. I did go to a Methodist boarding school so maybe there was a subliminal absorption of principle. I claim no exceptionalism here. Surely most of us are the same?

But raise your eyes to those who think themselves born to rule and what is right can be blurred and very different. Take Britain’s last three Prime Ministers. Two of the three never had a moment’s doubt about their rights. The third was you or me – bright but ordinary. Struggling with life a bit as we all struggle with life from time to time. Unlike Theresa neither Dave nor Boris would call a memoir “My Struggle” . Because it hasn’t been.

That very posh school sets its pupils apart. It may not overtly preach its superiority these days but its culture is unquestionably elitist. All its pupils, bar a few token scholarship boys, come from the one per cent wealthy of our society (or its equivalent abroad). Eton’s dress code, rules, language and the rest combine to make its attendees different – and, by implication, superior in their eyes.

And when they get to Oxford, as many do building on their advantage? Well that Floreat Etona bond hasn’t gone away. The Bullingdon Club gave our two Etonian Prime Ministers in embryo an opportunity to reinforce their superiority. The “Bullers” broke the law to the manner born. Wrecking restaurants was part of that sense of entitlement.

If your whole childhood is predicated on privilege and a total absence of self-doubt that is your norm. And if a fellow Buller went to a “minor” public school , as George Osbourne did, he is insulted and called an “oik”. There is nothing more hierarchical than an Etonian.

In their years of employment there was no absorption of a wider social perspective for Dave of Boris. They didn’t get their hands dirty or find themselves exposed outside of their familiar class world. Johnson’s personal idiosyncrasies and character got him into trouble from time to time but he sailed effortlessly through sackings and career and marital setbacks. Cameron was squeaky clean, married into the aristocracy that gave him a milieu in which favours could be asked for and granted. All above board naturally.

So looking at the allegations of lobbying to feather your nest a bit seems not inconsistent with the privileges that went before. There is no Old Boy Network stronger than that of Eton and Oxford. And that, just like wrecking a restaurant, may have a touch of bending the rules about it. It’s not what you know it’s who you know, old boy.

There is a piece in The Times today describing the strength of Boris Johnson’s poll ratings. 😱

I suppose what it actually boils down to is what you see politics as being about. Call me naïve but surely at the very highest level it’s about doing your utmost to make lives better for the nation and all its citizens. A law of conflicting utility under which benefits for one group are accompanied by disadvantages for another makes that difficult. Judgment calls have to be made – you can’t please all the people all the time.

Boris Johnson is a very obvious and particular sort of populist. All his actions are based to show him in the best possible light among the target group of the nearly half of the electorate who like him. It’s brand management of a most particular kind. Unusually failures of competence that would be fatal for other politicians seem not to touch him, indeed the core support for his brand seems to grow in inverse proportion to the efficacy of his actions.

Whilst the populism drives the poll ratings Johnson also makes sure that his key supporters power base is kept sweet. The full story of the award of government contracts under the Johnson premiership has yet to emerge but even if there is a public enquiry, as surely there must be, Johnson will no doubt bluff his way through it.

The media is subservient. The failure of the BBC properly to hold the Government to account is unprecedented. Few of the print/online media do this either. Brave writers do put their heads above the parapet , including in The Times, but all too many turn a blind eye or get platforms for propaganda rather than reasoned argument. Including in The Times.

The failure of the Government’s handing of the pandemic ought to have led to Johnson’s “legacy” being as Britain’s worst Prime Minister of modern times – by far. 125,000 bereaved families is a pretty appalling disaster to have on your report card. A cabinet you chose without one obviously competent member bewilders political commentators who struggle to find precedents for this gruesome cabal of lightweights. But Boris sails on untouched.

Johnson is a gambler but he is a shrewd and lucky one. To ignore the manufacturers’ expert advice on the gap between virus jabs, and to be the only country in the world to do so, was an astonishing act of insouciance. He might get away with it but even if it goes seriously belly up, as it well might, he’ll probably bluster his way through.

The visual symbolism of the Johnson brand lies at the core of his popular appeal. Hence the flags. Patriotic populism is really all there is but doesn’t it just work? It lay behind Brexit – the sovereignty positioning of “Leave” was raw flag-waving populism. That has continued into Johnson’s premiership accompanied, as it was during the referendum campaign, by barely disguised anti-foreigner rhetoric. “Britain contra mondom” is a more accurate summation of our current declined status in the world than the preposterous “Global Britain” .

There is a well-researched piece in The Sunday Times today revealing the bizarre absurdity of Britain still having hereditary peers in our Upper House of Government. But in truth this anachronism is wholly consistent with the void of democracy inculcated in our benighted state. The reality is that patronage has placed some very odd people in the House of Lords , it’s not just hereditary.

Passing over the indefensible anachronism of a hereditary Head of State (some otherwise sane countries do the same) the real iniquity is that one of our houses of government is unelected and the other is chosen by an indefensibly undemocratic electoral system .

The home of Democracy (sic) is riddled with unfairness, privilege and corruption. It’s like a Savoy Opera though with an establishment cast of characters even WS Gilbert would have rejected as too far-fetched.

If we need an upper chamber then it would hardly be a revolutionary act to decide to elect it. And to ensure that there was a better correlation between the votes a political party receives and the number of seats in the Commons it gets is not exactly a treasonous idea either.

If there is such a thing as “British Values” then “Silliness” is one of them. Look at a photograph of the unelected Lords in their pantomime robes and it beats Monty Python in its silliness. The farcical costume drama just makes us look like idiots. But the iniquitous electoral system runs the risk of a descent into dictatorship and at the moment we are some way down that slippery slope.

We lack checks and balances and one that we do have, the power of revision of the upper house, is sullied by the fact that those exercising that power are in place wholly undemocratically. And the House of Commons, by virtue of First Past The Post, bars the fair representation of political ideas that deviate from established norms. A Conservative vote in Islington, a Labour vote in Surrey and a Green vote almost anywhere is a wasted vote.

Constitutional reform is long overdue but wiil it happen when there are so many vested interests in the way ? Don’t hold your breath.

The first significant protests I can remember were in the late 1960s against the Vietnam War and Apartheid. I was a student at the time and supported the causes and played a very small part in the events. They were anti-establishment though not, I think, anarchic nor, crucially, were the protests illegal.

The right to protest is an inalienable right of a democratic society. I was in West Berlin at Easter 1968 – it was a time of protest and I got trenched by a police water cannon. This was a bit heavy-handed but comical rather than anything terrible sinister. I was more an observer than a participant in part because I wasn’t entirely sure what the protests were about! The other side of the wall there were no protests about anything – totalitarian regimes of Right and Left ban protest gatherings of course.

To protest, or support protest, is often an act of display for the individual. A show of solidarity with a cause. But allowing protest is a measure of society’s freedoms. Do they work ? Sometimes they do. Those back in 1968 helped the anti-war and the anti-Apartheid causes but it was to be a long haul. Nelson Mandela didn’t complete his long march to freedom until 1990.

Acts of display take place on both sides of the argument but there are some commonalities. Defenders of the Vietnam War and apologists for Apartheid overlapped strongly – they were on the Right of politics whereas the protestors were mainly on the Left.

Today the Left/Right political meme works less obviously, though some commentators still use it frequently. Lefties v Fascists is not a very illuminating debate. There are other binary polarities around that are more useful. Nationalist versus Internationalist is one as is Black Lives Matter and support for women’s rights.

My parents, not liberals, used to ask me what sort of society I really wanted when I expressed support for what they saw as “Left Wing” causes. They broadly wanted the status quo whilst I wanted change, especially social change. When my political hero Roy Jenkins worked his socially liberalising magic in the late 1960s my parent’s generation mostly objected – at least in the Home Counties they did.

Today there are many rebels in search of a cause. One off events can spur them into instant protest action but some of these causes are short-lived. In binary times there is a certainty about rapidly taken positions that is not always underpinned by solid intellectual reasoning. Maybe this always was the case to some extent even for issues that superficially seemed black and white – like Apartheid of course.

Protest is at its best when it is not just “I object” but when it is bolstered by “…and here’s what most be done”. It can be counter-productive if it becomes like “ I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this any more!” the immortal refrain yelled from the window by anchorman Howard Beale in the 1976 film Network. “I’m as mad as hell, and here’s what you should do about it.” would be better today. But there’s not much of that around.

There is a good article on racism in the Sunday Times today – except for the fact that racism is not defined. That is because the whole concept is subjective. What I think is racist is unlikely to be the same as what you think is racist. It is not an absolute.

The words bigotry and prejudice come closer to helping us understand the subject. As does discrimination. These are arguably racism in practice. So if I discriminate against somebody in employment (for example) then I can be seen to be racist – there is hard evidence.

Let’s look at the “median household wealth” graphic from the Sunday Times above. For a white household to have an almost ten times higher wealth than a black African one is remarkable. Is this the collective result of decades of discrimination, of culture and lifestyle, of educational failure – or of something else ? If we don’t analyse and explain then it can feed bigotry. There are plenty of social Darwinists around who will argue it’s nature more than nurture.

Judgments are nearly always biased by our own norms. Observing, for example, a high street in a predominantly Asian area how often do white British express disapproval ? “It’s not Britain any more”. Point out that Brits of Asian heritage are just as British as they are (a fact) and they disagree. Is this hard core racism or just ignorant prejudice?

British Society is full of discriminations – by race, creed, colour, class, gender, religion – even accent and place of origin. These discriminations are often ignorant and sweeping. I’ve been insulted on social media because of my first name and told I’m an “Irish git”. I was born in Kent and have no Irish connections !

The hard fact is that the default position in Britain, and not just white Britain, is to stay in our familiar enclaves. We don’t mix very well. And Ignorance breeds prejudice. Where there is genuine integration – in The Arts or Healthcare for example – knowledge and experience triumphs over bigotry.

I’m afraid we are in Mandy Rice-Davis territory with Prince William’s denial that the Royal Family is racist – he would say that wouldn’t he? We live in a dysfunctional and mendacious society, not least at the top. Statements by public figures are almost invariably lies or at best economical with the actualité. Add to that the fact that racism is on a spectrum from casual and infrequent at one end to institutional at the other. Where the Royal Family is on that spectrum, and if it’s on it at all, isn’t a provable fact, it’s an opinion.

To wonder what skin colour the child of a mixed race marriage will be doesn’t strike me as racist per se. I’m sure the parents do it routinely. Though how that wonderment is expressed could surely be. The fact that the firm hasn’t come clean about Harry’s allegation strikes me as suspicious suggesting that the remark went further than just innocent speculation.

The Royal Family is elitist and has a long record of snobbery and personal dysfunctionality. Three of the Queen’s children have been divorced. The heir to the throne was a calculating and uncaring adulterer. His first wife was marginalised and treated in an inconsiderate way and her mental health suffered – thirty years on that pattern has repeated itself.

The scandal we are witnessing is one of almost incomprehensible bad manners and missed opportunity. In most families there is a challenge to welcome and embrace a new member – especially if they are different. Meghan is different in almost every way. The opportunity to turn those differences into positives was there to be grabbed. Not to find this intelligent and impressive and talented woman a proper Royal role is not just sub-optimum it was wounding to her.

And so I found that England is not Camelot at all. There are Knights alright and there is lots of dressing up. But the table is not round and most of the knights are kept well way from it. She sits at its head and there is no pretence of equality. “Looks like I need to know my place” I said to the Lady Fergie, my new best friend. “You better believe it” she replied with a scary smile.

“Did you learn to curtesy” Harry asked me early on. I viewed it on YouTube and the Lady May showed how. “You can’t bow too low” said Fergie, good for the back. “You may be a Duchess dear, but they’re ten a Penny. Better safe than sorry”.

Katherine was the model. I didn’t want to be her, God no, but I could learn from her. Smile a lot and grab a Prince’s hand. And bow of course. One day early on I asked her what she wanted out of life. “You mean apart from being Queen, and the mother of a King” she said. It sounds like a put down – it probably was.

Harry’s Dad is really a fictional character. “Is he for real?” I asked Harry. “Oh yes Megs “ he said “we quietly checked the DNA. My red hair’s a throwback – nothing to do with one of Mum’s suitors. Bit weird but that’s how it is.” Harry can’t stand him and it’s a stretch for him to be polite. The ‘stopped taking my calls’ wasn’t a joke.

If I was casting the soap opera I wouldn’t make the short list. Camilla (aka “Cruella”) is perfect in her role. Christopher Plummer auditioned for the consort role but Philip was just too perfect. And he had a British passport from somewhere. They’ve conveniently forgotten that, like me, he’s a foreigner. Meryl Streep offered to teach me to “Talk English”. – should I have done that?

So there we are. We are the villains and I’m about as popular as Wallis Simpson. My Duke’s in Santa Barbara not Paris but it’s more of the same. Wallis was the first Yankee in the Court. That didn’t go well. It’s not really looking that good for me either…

The Empire is a long time a-dying but its last vestige, the Commonwealth, is looking decidedly shaky. It is an organisation without power, or logic. Nations today are grouped by geography or common interest, often economic. The Commonwealth has neither. At best it is a talking shop, at worst an anachronism. The sad (for some) truth is that it doesn’t matter and never did.

It took us an unconscionable amount of time to stop being Imperial and remarkably we do still have a few colonies. But the Commonwealth is not colonial – though there is a strong element of nostalgic deference to the “Old Country” in it. It’s not venal, doesn’t damage the sovereignty of the member states – but it is irredeemably silly and pretentious.

When the Queen came to the throne the process of decolonisation had only just begun. She was never an Empress, but the sun never set on her subjects. Some seemed to like that and she remains Head of State in many. Quite why is hard to fathom. It’s daft enough for Britain to have an unelected Head of State but for countries to choose to have one who isn’t even a national is weird to say the least !

The Commonwealth countries choose their own heads of State and that some of them choose to have the British monarch (most don’t) is their business. A harmless eccentricity. The Commonwealth as a whole is the same. Some countries with no colonial past have joined the Commonwealth which makes the whole thing even odder, and arbitrary.

Can you name one thing the Commonwealth Conferences have actually achieved ? “Commonwealth Preference” is long since gone. The problem, of course, is that they have no power so their sentiments may be worthy and Jaw, Jaw is always preferable to War War but they can’t do anything.

Britain’s place in the world is in a state of flux – the “lost an Empire and not yet found a role” descriptor is more valid than it has ever been. The Commonwealth may remind us of our “Glorious Past” (not so glorious actually, but that’s another story). But clinging on to an ersatz Empire just makes us look self-important and silly. Time a line was drawn under this nonsense.