England is a strange concept but the idea of a United Kingdom is perhaps even stranger…

While people were rather surprised that the Brexit referendum voted for leave, it’s no real surprise that the people of that tiny island were sick of people from Europe coming into their country.

Let’s take a brief look at the history of England and ignore Scotland, Wales and Ireland because that’s the right thing to do if one is English.

We begin by not talking about the Britons. It would be a waste of time to spend much time on the tribes roaming around before the Romans because not many histories do, so I’m going straight to first major European invasion which is, of course, the Romans. At this point I’ll resist the temptation to ask what the Romans ever did for England because I know that someone will be sure to add the long list from “The Life Of Brian” in the comments. Suffice to say, “Veni vedi, vici”, which loosely translated means, “The Romans came, they saw, they conquered and then wondered why and fucked off back to what we now call Italy. Ok, it wasn’t quite the actual translation and they did stick around for a few hundred years but once they realised that all the best shops and cafes were going to be on the continent they saw no reason to stay.

Rome’s exit meant that the people left were at the mercy of anyone who was a bigger bully than those who were left, which was pretty much anyone because those who had put up a fight like Boadicea had been suppressed by Roman rule and the rest were pretty used to being second class citizens in the own homeland.

When the Picts (from Scotland) and the Scots (from Ireland) – yes I know it doesn’t make sense but that will become a feature of British history from this point on – started moving in, the Britons decided to encourage someone with a bit more fighting power to come and help, so they turned to the Saxons who not only quelled the Picts and Scots but decided that England was such a nice place that they’d set up there and begin the great British tradition of being ruled by someone from Germany. This period led to the term Anglo-Saxon.

Of course, being such a small island it was possible to defend, but most people thought, why bother? After all the Romans were an improvement and the Saxons certainly had a much greater sense of order than the Picts or the Scots, so what harm could a few more invaders do?

Then along come the Vikings who did the first version of “Winner Takes It All” which was much less popular than when their descendants did it as “ABBA” many centuries later.

Eventually, we had the Normans who, as the name suggested came from France.

All this explains could explain why English spelling is so full of rules that only make sense when they’re followed and can be largely ignored because, when they’re not followed, it’s because they follow a different set of rules thanks to them being derived from neither of the two main languages that made up English.

At this point, it could be appropriate to mention that an American decided that he could make the whole thing simpler by leaving out letters here and there. This would have worked a treat had not it been for the fact that the USA decided to spread their literature throughout the globe, leading to yet another complication for English spelling, which is why you need to explain to spellchuck whether you want to use English (UK) version or English (US) version or English (who gives a fuck about spelling these days it’s the vibe, man)…

All of which brings me to the obvious point of the problem with multicultural Britain is that Kebbab needs two b’s to follow the rules of English and that leads to the eternal question posed by Hamlet…

2bs or not 2bs?

Anyway, when you put all this together you suddenly see that all the English wanted was to keep out anyone else who’d just make their language more confusing and that Brexit wasn’t racist, it was just a load of people who find spelling hard enough and a group of billionaires who didn’t want to pay tax and who were worried about Europe actually working out a way of making them.

This also explains why the English love the Royal Family even though, thanks to the intermarriage over generations of royal families throughout Europe, every single one of them has less actual English blood than your average homeless vagrant sleeping on the streets.

Mm, does this mean that one day they’ll realise this simple fact and revolt, placing some homeless person on the throne owing to the purity of their blood? Or are they just used to being taken over by foreigners and are happy to have as their King someone whose father was Greek and who’s mother was of such mixed race that Ancestor.com would think it was a joke?

Perhaps they should ask Rupert Murdoch what he thinks because he, after all, is Australian who became an American…