I used to be proud to be able to call myself English, not for John Bullish reasons, but because largely I thought we had standards to be proud of: in legal terms Rule of Law, Separation of Powers, independent judiciary, many caring professional groups, who looked after the more vulnerable in our country and others, and sporting prowess! Scientists and the caring professions remain high in my estimation, but they are vulnerable to political manipulation.

The last high spot I can recognise is 2012 when the Spirit of the Nation was unified and we combined with other countries in a primarily positive way. I was a volunteer driver all round London for three weeks, during which time there were limits on our personal freedoms, especially on the roads. I cannot recall a racist or other social incident during the 2012 Olympics.

Since then of course we have had austerity, on which we now have research evidence to demonstrate that it has had a damaging effect on life expectancy (which must also mean other damaging consequences). And in 2016 we had the disastrous Brexit campaign of lies and deceit, which led to a developing understanding that government was increasingly able to tell lie after lie and flout the constitutional norms, without consequences to their political standing.

If you can lie about £350m on the side of a bus, what can’t you do. If you can create a Cabinet in your own image and appoint only second rate ministers who will do your bidding and sack the rational thinkers from government and party, what can’t you do.

If you can break the law by refusing, on a mere statement in the House of Commons, to implement a political commitment, enshrined in a statute, to provide foreign aid of .7% of GDP, what can’t you do.

And where I lose my pride to an even greater degree is that we have a Lord Chancellor, a man previously thought to have some decency) who can state in public that it does not matter what the Prime Minister does or says because he has public support, we have a majority of MPs who are willing to comply with that debasement of standards, and we have enough people in the country who support him for him to continue his lying, deceit, self-interest, cronyism. One woman is reported as saying during the Hartlepool election that she liked him because he was like her. So she admits to lying and cheating her way through life. It seems there are many like her.

The next hope for bringing the country together at least to some degree has been the EU Football in 2021. But it is now becoming increasingly clear that the government set out to destroy that hope, largely it seems because it feared the political impact of a country at one. We have white men rioting at Wembley without serious media comment. The police are looking for five people. Imagine if that had been blacks in Tottenham. We have government led racist abuse of some of our leading players. If the Trump cap fits wear it.

I feel little to be proud of in England or being English right now. And the threats to democracy only increase that feeling.

And now in mid August 2021 we see more evidence of this Government’s incompetence and hypocrisy, as the Taliban resume power in Afghanistan. All that loss of life has been wasted as this xenophobic, self interested cabal leaves a vacuum with potentially disastrous humanitarian consequences and almost certainly a return to a state in which there is little respect for women and ‘unbelievers’. ‘We did not expect it to happen so quickly’ says the Government, as thousands are stranded and at the mercy of religious fanatics.