“Everything that’s good in this world started on this great island of ours,” declared Lee Anderson on his debut Real World show for GB News last Friday night. As statements from the Conservative deputy chairman go, it was every bit as truthful as some of his other recent pronouncements (“people complain about poverty now: that’s bollocks”; “foodbank users are often wasting money on fags, booze and Sky TV”; “Brexit was a great decision”; “the Tories are not a sinking ship”).
The MP for Ashfield told viewers he was “so proud to be a British person, even prouder to be an Englishman”. He hailed Britain as “a gift to the world” and – possibly channelling Derek Trotter – “an independent trading nation”.
He then added: “I keep saying this to anybody that will listen. Look at the things we’ve done in the past. We’ve given railways, we’ve given technology, the Industrial Revolution, arts, culture, Dickens, Shakespeare, sports.
“Look at, you know, football, tennis, rugby, golf – everything that’s good in this world started on this great island of ours.”
This is absolutely true, apart from just a few small things. These include trifles like electricity, television, the home computer, the guitar, jazz, rock ‘n roll and hip-hop (the Americans); the compass, papermaking, matches and alcohol (the Chinese); antibiotics, cinema, photography and the pencil (the French); the printing press, refrigerator and the modern car (the Germans); the battery, the microscope, the piano, radio and spectacles (the Italians); and of course sanitation, medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a freshwater system and public health (the Romans, via Monty Python).
Primitive man (though not the one representing Ashfield) would have been surprised to hear that Britain invented art and sport, while the ancient Greeks and Romans may just have been doing culture before us. Though since many of their great artistic and cultural creations now reside in our museums, maybe Lee is claiming them as British.
The Chinese and Egyptians were quite good at technology (and, together with the Greeks and Romans, were playing football long before we invented it). Tennis evolved from a French game (and another version was played by the Greeks). The Romans, Chinese and Persians all played variants of golf before the modern game emerged in 15th-century Scotland.
What is undoubtedly true is that Britain, during its decades as the world’s leading commercial nation, was a centre for giant leaps forward in mechanisation and in technological, artistic and sporting innovation. We made stuff and we fine-tuned and mass-produced the inventions of others.
We have indeed given – and taken – much. But did Britain really give the world “everything that’s good?” Of course not, and it’s embarrassing to hear a senior member of our country’s ruling party pretending it did. Would that happen anywhere else in the world?
Anderson’s musings on how Britain invented everything came at the start of a bizarre show which really should be retitled Surreal World. It went on to feature him spoon-feeding cold beans into the mouth of Bassetlaw MP Brendan Clarke-Smith before picking a “wokey of the week” with Simon Danczuk, the former Labour MP who was suspended by the party in 2015 over allegations that he sent sexually explicit text messages to a 17-year-old girl.
For this, Anderson is being paid £100,000 a year by the failing right-wing channel, despite his previous attacks on MPs who take second jobs.
In November 2021 during the Owen Paterson lobbying scandal, he wrote on Facebook: “I don’t have a second job, I love the job I have already. We are paid handsomely for the job we do and if you need an extra £100,000 a year on top then you should really be looking for another job.”
Perhaps then it is in hypocrisy that Britain really is world-leading.
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