The Few

The possible contradictions between standard historical Britishness and the Gove-Ferguson model were demonstrated today by a confrontation between Daveybloke and an irate pensioner. Daveybloke, while doing a bit of grovelling in America, said that Britain had been a "junior partner" against the Nazis in 1940; the pensioner, whose stepfather served in the Royal Navy, asked who the senior partner had been given that the US only joined the fun when the Nazis were considerate enough to declare war on it. Daveybloke "pointed out that his remark had actually been made in a television interview as he visited the US last month"; hence mere accuracy was rather less of a concern than is usual among our more exalted echelons. Daveybloke then burbled that in 1940, indeed, "we were completely on our own" on the whole, except for a few Polish immigrants and Frenchmen (and a few Czechs, but evidently too few to mention), which on the whole is about as completely alone as any nation with a few million Asian coolies working to support it could possibly wish to be. Britain's leading liberal newspaper points out that Germany brought the US in on our side in December 1941.

Significant casualties in the Second World War were about 450,000 British, or less than one per cent of the population; and about 420,000 American, or less than half of one per cent of the population. Casualties in the USSR, which Germany attacked five months before our senior partner got with the programme, were about twenty-six million, or thirteen and a half per cent of the population: again, hardly a big enough sacrifice for mention by either Britain's leading liberal newspaper or Michael Gove's keeper.