Holy Britishness

Britain's Head Boy has delivered his Christmas rah-rah, in which he piously extols the wonders of striking your neighbour's cheek and burbles about the multicultural tolerance of a faith that has conquered, burned and persecuted its way across the world whenever its adherents were not too preoccupied in squabbling among themselves.

Possibly Britain's Head Boy was thinking of the economic Christianity of Maffeo Barberini, who took the papal name Urban VIII and of whom it was said that, like Crown Prince Osborne, he spent three treasuries: his own, his predecessor's and his successor's. In a particularly charming piece of proto-Bullingdon boorishness, Urban plundered bronze from the Roman Pantheon in order to build cannons, leading certain uncharitable persons to compare him unfavourably with the Visigoths: "what the barbarians didn't do, Barberini did."

Then again, perhaps Britain's Head Boy was thinking of the great Christian peace process that was the Fourth Crusade: a military campaign of startling spiritual Britishness that set out to cleanse Jerusalem of unauthorised Muslim migrants and ended up destroying a Christian city in order to appease some bankers.

Or, come to think of it, perhaps Britain's Head Boy was thinking of the essence and kernel of the Christian faith itself, which is that a poor man was made to suffer for the debts of others. Certainly Britain's Head Boy will have been eager to impress upon the great unwashed the value of spiritual things, since those are the only things of value for which his cronies have no use.