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# The Brits are After You
- URL: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/the-brits-are-after-you/
- Published: 2007-09-26T15:09:24.000Z
- Updated: 2019-02-14T22:37:32.000Z
- Author: openDemocracy Supporters
- Tags: #en, #Migrated, #Import 2026-04-09 18:31

**Tom Nairn (Livingston and Melbourne,**[](http://www.rmit.edu.au/Globalism?ref=opendemocracy.net)[**RMIT University**](http://www.rmit.edu.au/Globalism?ref=opendemocracy.net)**):** Since Gordon Brown’s appearance as United Kingdom Premier, assorted premonitions have surfaced in the gloom. Britlanders now inhabit a haunted house on the edge of a cemetery, where such terminology seems appropriate. Brown was not of course elected, parachuted from On High, or installed by an indignant mob: over many years he materialized in fits and starts, glimpsed intermittently like a ghost from times past, brooding but saying almost nothing. Then suddenly the spirit was there, seated all too comfortably in the Anglo-Brit living room, account-books and Britannic sermons to hand. The armchair’s previous occupant had left for Jerusalem.

Such is death-in-life. The funniest sequence in Edgar Wright’s movie *Shaun of the Dead* (2004) was where Shaun, seeing that the living were now besieged by zombies, organizes a pretend-resurrection class at which people learn to stumble and stare properly, groaning in broken graveyard English. But that was just prediction: ‘reality’ is worse. No Shaun has appeared to rally the English. David Cameron seems convinced the mausoleum can be maintained by New-Dawn-speak — itself another trait of the late-Brit times, perfected by Blair. ‘Better yesterday’ had long been the UK’s chosen route to modernity. Under Brown it has reached its terminus.

The key zombie aim is graveyard peace: a new Consensus to leave the sacred essence unaltered amid ritual round-table acclaim, all-change orations, and deference-tours of Washington Beltway. Serious constitutional commentators like [Anthony King](http://www.prospect-magazine.co.uk/article%5Fdetails.php?search%5Fterm=anthony+king&id=9754&ref=opendemocracy.net) and [Vernon Bogdanor](http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts%5Fand%5Fentertainment/the%5Ftls/tls%5Fselections/politics/article2306044.ece?ref=opendemocracy.net) have been appalled not by Brown’s radicalism but by his timidity. However, what the famed indecisiveness masks is a death-wish: Posthumous Greatness at all costs, including Trident and two new super-super-aircraft-carriers.

In *Shaun* the graveyard ghouls came back for another try — and set about devouring the living to do so. Brown’s immediate aim will be a funerary binge, at which the creaking Westminster gates will be locked up for many years: ‘general election’ is the term. Such is the man’s appeal for everything times-past that under twenty per cent of voters might pull it off (in 2005, twenty-one-and-a-half per cent got him where he is today). All Brown-Britland needs is enough non-voters — plus *just* enough Lib-Dems to furnish a reluctant alibi for the gnarled Gatekeeper, as the rusting bolt grinds home.

Could it have been different? Well of course, had thorough reform of the central apparatus accompanied devolution — and all that. In hypothetical retrospect, perfectly modest changes like a fairer electoral system might have partly freed the English people. Now, however, the sole possible answer is condemned by all true-Brits as *completely unthinkable.* Which merely returns one tothe point, the only one that matters. Plausible as a confederated Council of the Isles (or something like that) might have been, *it’s now too late.* Failed states *can* reach the buffers at the end of their track, Brownism is zomboid victory, and that’s that. He has now rammed the point home with the 80 Brit-points Labour Party Bournemouth speech.

This has begun to dawn on both the Scots and the Welsh, and (even more surprisingly) the Northern Irish. [Michael Fry](http://www.prospect-magazine.co.uk/article%5Fdetails.php?search%5Fterm=michael+fry&id=7973&ref=opendemocracy.net) argued in *Prospect* a year ago that for Scots the only way out from Britland Cemetery is out; and I wholeheartedly agree with him. But what about the English? Well...*Shaun, Shaun, where are you*?

*This article also appears in the online edition of* [*Prospect Magazine*](http://www.prospect-magazine.co.uk/landing%5Fpage.php?ref=opendemocracy.net) *\- have a look as well at their cover story this month* [*"In search of British Values"*](http://www.prospect-magazine.co.uk/article%5Fdetails.php?id=9829&ref=opendemocracy.net)*.*