United Kingdom: Basking in an Olympic triumph

last updated 8 January 2015

Thanks to our spectacularly successful Olympics, the U.K. is “bursting with patriotic pride,” said Eddie Izzard in the Mirror. It’s quite a bizarre feeling. We’re usually modest to the point of self-deprecation. But from the moment the “stunning opening ceremony” began, showcasing British cultural and scientific achievement along with cheeky British humor, patriotism has been cool. How uplifting to cheer for our gold medalists with their multicultural backgrounds, including Mo Farah, who came here as a Somali refugee, and the mixed-race Jessica Ennis. We have finally, as a nation, stopped “harking back to the days of the British Empire.” This will be seen as “the moment Britain grew up into a progressive, liberal, and confident country.”

We have every reason to be proud, said The Independent in an editorial. This “very British affair” will surely be known as “the Happy Games.” In the middle of one of the world’s densest, oldest cities, we built arenas, transported a million people from event to event, and kept everyone safe—thanks largely to tens of thousands of smiling volunteers. It’s a much-needed reminder to ourselves of “the capabilities of this odd little island.” Team GB did its bit, said Tim Lott, also in The Independent, raking in the third largest gold medal haul. But this is about more than sport. These Games showed our creative force, our contributions to global culture. “It is remarkable for such a small country, standing head to head with the mighty U.S. in terms of innovation and imagination.”

But is that where we belong? asked Matthew Parris in The Times. This was “a shindig we couldn’t really afford.” Staging the Games cost $14 billion in public money that we didn’t have and won’t pay back for decades. While it “did cheer us all up for a few weeks,” so many things could have gone horribly wrong. London’s transport system could easily have collapsed entirely—the only reason it didn’t is that almost the entire population of the city fled for the duration. I, for one, am happy the Games are over, said Peter Hitchens in the Daily Mail. The enforced gaiety was creepy and oppressive. Those who dared to criticize the excruciating opening ceremony as so much leftist twaddle were pilloried. Yes, it’s great that we won all those medals, but “would you rather have Australia’s thriving economy, or Britain’s medal tally?” Games aside, the nation is still “broke, disorderly, badly educated, and gravely troubled by the greatest wave of mass immigration in our history.”