Maybe if every aspect of what we call British Culture hadn't been sliced up for use as a meat-mask by the British establishment; if every cultural artifact that could be sold hadn't been turned into tea towels, and the rest ground into the dirt;

if every expression of national celebration wasn't forced through the prism of the monarchy; if regional cultures hadn't been crushed beneath a prescriptive, state imposed sense of identity; if the Union Flag weren't such a janky-looking piece of shit;

if the national anthem weren't such a miserable dirge for servile little worms; if we hadn't made anti-intellectualism integral to our worldview and chosen to admire instead the innate intelligence of the ruling class;

if our raging sense of exceptionalism didn't lead us to claim that bad things are actually good, and that good food can be improved by the addition of a couple more ingredients; if we didn't idealise our history in order to ignore the urgency of the present;

then maybe, just maybe, British Culture wouldn't be so cringe to begin with