The Olympics Hasn't 'United' Britain – We're Still at Each Other's Throats

It's about time we appreciated Britain's greatest unsung national heroes. Not our Olympians, not our blank-eyed military fetish-objects, but the people who put everything on the line every day and get absolutely nothing back: the whiners, the fun-ruiners, the utter joyless pricks who do nothing but talk down this country, puke at the sight of our flag and roll their eyes at every national achievement that might just bring someone joy. We need these people now more than ever.

Why? Because there's a heatwave going on and Britain just came second in the Olympic table, with a stunning 27 gold medals. "Maybe, despite Brexit – despite the wars and the cops and the stagnant wages – everything will actually turn out OK, because we just won some medals for rowing," imply the joy-blinded glee-mongers. But they're wrong. This is a time of unprecedented danger. Only the crybabies can save us.

Unsurprisingly, the usual suspects don't agree. In the wake of our triumphs in Rio de Janeiro, the sunshine brigade can't just be happy with the result; they have to relentless slap down anyone who isn't.

Suzanne Moore, in the Guardian, moans that "we could certainly win a gold for self-loathing whinging", fussing about nationalism when this summer of sport has "given some much-needed uplift to a divided country". The Telegraph's Zoe Strimpel whinges that for "chattering classes in their metropolitan ghettoes", any display of "national pride can only be one of two things: a money-grubbing charade, or a show of proto-fascism". And scraping the bottom of the barrel, there's an utterly bizarre rant from Leo McKinstry in the Express, titled: "Brexit and Rio are a smack in the face for sour-faced EU-lovers who REJECT national pride," which doesn't really need to be quoted any further than than.

More of these examples exist – many more – and most of them don't even bother to cite any actual, real Britain-hating snobs before attacking them. They just assume, with the total confidence of the blinkered optimist, that these gloomy realists must exist. And all we can do is hope that they're right.

Say what you like about the Olympics, the line goes, but doesn't all that sport bring us together? Doesn't it unite the nation behind our brilliant athletes in Brazil, at a time when we're so divided about everything else? Doesn't it make everyone feel good?

If you think about it, this can't possibly be true. If the Games really had brought us all together – if we'd all melded into one blobby, sports-happy flesh-sphere – then there wouldn't be any need to constantly attack some imagined other who hasn't been brought into this fold. The fury against the joy-killers is that of a false unity that depends on an excluded other but isn't able to admit to it. It's the anger of an integral contradiction that's blocked itself off from being worked through.

It should go without saying that the imaginary blowhards are right about everything. Team GB is a piece of ingenious branding: at the cost of excluding Northern Ireland, it's managed to plumb deep into all those hidden veins of reactionary nostalgia and 1940s kitsch – that "Keep Calm"-style font, that wheezing old Victorian lion falling apart into the national colours, conjuring up a vanished world of Blitz spirit, pulling together, cream teas and decency, all the knockabout ephemera of the national consciousness's ideal-ego.

But if Britain has done well, it isn't because of a renewed national spirit – one that'll see us through the catastrophes to come with a phlegmatic assurance – it's because our government has ploughed millions into helping a few select individuals get really good at rowing and the long jump. Maybe our sporting achievements will only improve as things get worse: most of the country might be reduced to running across minefields and shooting bandits to steal a loaf of bread for their families, but the experience will produce the finest pentathletes in the world. And all this is absolutely being used for malign political ends. See Theresa May, congratulating her toy athletes on their victories: "The euphoria of London 2012 didn't end four years ago, and it doesn't end now." When a head of government announces a period of national mania, don't we have a duty to adopt the most depressive, joyless, bitter, miserable posture possible?

In the end, it's the invocation of unity that's the most worrying. Britain is not united. We're all at each other's throats; even in the middle of our glorious summer of sport, we're still rabid for blood. The Labour party is popping ribs as it tears itself in two, fighter jets are firing high explosives somewhere over the horizon, and in the close, hot clammy nights, fights spiral giddy out of club doorways. We're not really coming together and healing our political wounds because of a few metal discs; the idea that we are – and the idea that this would even be a good thing – is being imposed on us from above. As if a moment of false unity, racists and minorities coming together to cheer on Mo Farah would be anything other than a sublimation of the struggle, laying a big union flag over the cracks while the rot sinks deeper into the foundations.

But you can't say this. If you do, you're just a buzzkill – a joyless miserabilist. In which case, joyless miserabilism is exactly what we need.

@sam_kriss

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