Replace ‘Rule Britannia’ at the Proms with ‘Wonderwall’. We have more to offer than Empire nostalgia

We have long had new symbols of Britishness that we can all celebrate: the NHS, Tunnock’s tea cakes, ‘Countdown’. Why not replace the old anthems with a series of in-jokes sung heartily to the old tunes?

It’s one thing to be a bit of a British imperialist and to wallow musically in the glories and blessings of British rule being bestowed on a quarter of the world’s population (whether they liked it or not). It can’t have seemed that foolish or eccentric in the days of Rhodes, Kipling, Elgar and the Raj. Today, however, with the British Empire reduced to the Falklands, Bermuda and a few other outposts, it seems a bit too, well, silly, and not in a good way.

The uninhibited and admittedly rousing renditions of “Rule Britannia” and “Land of Hope and Glory” at the Last Night of the Proms seem more embarrassing and absurd than ever now that Britain is about to start its slide back into post-Brexit genteel economic decline. Before the decade is out it will soon rank behind the likes of Mexico, Brazil and, ironically enough, post-imperial India in the world GDP league tables. Besides, since coronavirus befell us, there won’t be any fans for the sing-along anyway, empire or not.

So far from setting Britain’s bounds wider still and wider, by the time the Proms get back to normal, Scotland will probably have left the UK, New Zealand will be a republic and the government in Dublin will be trying to work out how to make Arlene Foster feel at home in a united Ireland. At this rate, HM King Charles III will be lucky to hang on to Yorkshire or the Isle of Wight, complete with its world-beating Covid-19 tracing app.

Songs about the acquisition by force of other people’s lands and mentions of slavery have probably had their day, at least so far as great national “unifying” joyous events like the Proms are concerned. Like the controversies about the statues, it seems obvious that there’s not much point to such customs if they upset some of our fellow citizens greatly. Things need to evolve.

It ought to be possible to be a bit flexible and pragmatic about the Proms. We have modern-day anthems everyone loves, such as “All You Need is Love”, “Wonderwall” and “The Birdie Song”. We have new symbols of Britishness that we can all celebrate instead of dominion over others; achievements such as the National Health Service and, erm, I’ll think of some others. I know: Countdown. Walkers Crisps. The Morris Minor. Dettol. Tea. Cod and chips. Ben Elton. Lenny Henry. Elton John. Zippy off Rainbow. Kenneth Williams. Frank Carson. Chicken tikka masala. Tunnock’s tea cakes. Welsh cakes. Ulster fry. Nora Batty. Chic Murray. Jasper Carrott. “Mad” Frankie Fraser. Association Football. Shakespeare. The spinning jenny. Andrew Neil.

These are uniquely British so that no other nation on earth would understand what we were on about. It would be a suitably insular anthem, a series of in-jokes but sung heartily to the old tunes. If that’s too much of a palaver we could just substitute “knaves” for “slaves” in “Rule Britannia”, as Mary Beard suggests.

It is, after all, what we made the Germans do when “Deutschland Uber Alles” became suddenly inappropriate in around 1945. No one minds now that the obscure reference in the full British national anthem to a Marshal Wade crushing “rebellious Scots” has been quietly dropped. The most successful, ie durable, of British institutions are those that adapt and move with the times (usually), such as the monarchy, the Conservative Party, the BBC and the Curly Wurly (subtly different to the 1973 original as advertised by Terry Scott). The Proms can be just the same, but different. Well may we soon sing “people never ever ever should be slaves”.