THE way in which it is generally supposed by the rest of the world that Britons respond in a crisis is something that has come to define us. While the citizens of other countries obey their instincts and react accordingly, the cool Brit detaches himself and quietly surveys the chaos while searching for a cigarette in the inside pocket of his tuxedo. In too many instances those nations whom we fondly regard as ‘temperamental’ (every other country in the world) allow their base instincts to prevail. As a result, beastly things can happen, such as revolutions, popular uprisings, curfews and dictators.

Cool Britannia, meanwhile, is deploying covert diplomacy: playing one side against the other; making alliances and only getting involved when it is safe to do so or whenever there is influence to be gained; territory to be annexed or riches to be had. Only very rarely, thankfully, have we had to act to defend ourselves. We regard anything that is fuelled by enthusiasm, eagerness or instinctiveness as something to be reviled and thus to be avoided.

Even when events at home appear to be spiralling out of control we advise caution and a sense of decorum: let’s all just keep things in perspective, there’s a good chap. Thus, when Ken Macintosh was sworn in as Scotland’s latest Presiding Officer he vowed “to take some of the hostility and sting and theatrics out of First Minister’s Questions”. And when a proper socialist was elected leader of the UK Labour Party he was immediately deemed to be an extremist. Two thirds of Jeremy Corbyn’s super-annuated party colleagues at Westminster think that only by being moderate and by promising not to scare the horses can Labour ever hope to govern again. Doesn’t he know that their first obligation is to their mortgage-providers?

And if anything that looks remotely unkempt or suspiciously raucous can be glimpsed on the horizon of British politics, such as supporters of Scottish independence or people who have recently paid £25 to join the UK Labour Party, well there are dozens of political commentators and members of the CBI on hand to call them extremist and simplistic. Why can’t they all just be satisfied with their semi-detacheds, their Tesco Chardonnay, their box sets and their golf club memberships?

There has been something suspiciously frenzied about the way that even the Conservative media has chosen to react to the retail sins of Sir Philip Green. In their eyes the worst aspect of his stewardship of BHS wasn’t that he had bled the High Street shopping chain dry while enriching himself and his wife. Nor was it that in doing so he had deprived the Treasury of millions of pounds in taxes and treated his workers and their families very poorly. It was that he had given capitalism “a bad name” and exhibited its “ugly side”; the inference being that capitalism has a decent side and exists for the greater good of humanity.

Perhaps, by showing how much they all heartily disapprove of Green’s vile business practices, the rest of us might all be persuaded that he is a rogue trader; a one-off who, of course, is unrepresentative of British business. Aye right.

The most grievous iniquity apparent in the BHS scandal wasn’t Green’s ruthless avarice at the expense of his fellow human beings, not by a long way. It is the wretched fact that nothing he did was illegal and that the regulatory watchdogs established, we naively imagined, to prevent such behaviour, were about as much use as a bicycle in the Sahara.

What Green did to BHS is what happens in thousands of tawdry little business takeovers up and down the country when workers, with no trade unions to protect them, are prey to the whims of shareholders who decide to cash in their chips when the price is right. It’s just that Green’s practices were on such a grand scale that they couldn’t be explained away as “decent capitalism”. This, after all, is the country which simply wrung its hands when executives of the Royal Bank of Scotland crippled the country’s economy. We then bailed them out, and, after a convenient interval, allowed them to restore their huge bonuses and destroy thousands of small enterprises by pulling in their overdraft facilities.

Three months ago it was revealed that tens of thousands of mini-Philip Greens had denuded the UK of much-needed tax revenues by hiding their assets in Panama and sundry British-administered offshore protectorates. The furious indignation that accompanied the Panama Papers leaks lasted about ten minutes.

When everything calms down again and the rest of us are looking the other way these people will be restored once more to polite society and lauded as wealth-creators; people who selflessly devote themselves to providing employment for their poorer fellow citizens.

WE will choose to ignore the fact that many of them simply pay their employees as little as they can get away with. We will accept their protestations of patriotism and their allegiance to Queen and country even as they slander Jeremy Corbyn and avoid paying their dues to Her Britannic Majesty and the country whose gentle liberalism allowed them to make such profits in the first place.

Of course, they will keep a few million spare to engage lobbying firms to secure exclusive access to Westminster… just to ensure that such scrutiny and legislation that exists doesn’t intrude too much on their activities. The first destination for David Cameron and his family following his departure from Downing Street was a £17m townhouse belonging to the owner of one of the most influential political lobbying firms in the country.

Nevertheless, it is still benefit cheats; welfare dependants and immigrants who must carry the can for the fragile state of the UK economy.

In the meantime; let’s all pull together and not fall out with each other. Don’t listen to dangerous people like Jeremy Corbyn and Nicola Sturgeon: they want to wreck the United Kingdom and destroy our comfortable way of life. There’s absolutely nothing to be angry about: trust us, it will all work out in the end.

Oh look… there’s another royal baby on the way; now where did I put my little Union Jack?