Britain and Australia: the cultural cringe

There is a cultural cringe between Britain and Australia. Specifically, Britain now cringes to Australia. People remark on British teenagers who pronounce every sentence as if it were a question. But that is not the half of it.

Neighbours has been a huge cultural phenomenon in Britain. The great and the good have not noticed, because they don’t watch it. Nor do I these days. But they never did. Of course they didn’t. People like them probably don’t in Australia, either. Why would they?

For Neighbours depicts people with limited education and no culture, yet enjoying considerable affluence. They live in sizeable houses, set in grounds large enough both for a nice garden and for a swimming pool. The sun shines all the time. And they retain the close family and community ties of the British working class in the 1950s. I hope that this does not sound snobbish or condescending. It is not intended to.

All of this appealed enormously in Major’s Britain. And the rest is cultural history. We now have Chardonnay-fuelled barbecues. Some people even refer to a university as a “uni”, although my spell-check still does not recognise this word. I do not suggest that our secondary school years were redesignated Years Seven, Eight, Nine and so on in imitation of Neighbours or the then popular Home and Away. But it was certainly in accordance with the Australophile spirit of teenage life in the Major years. I know: I was there.

And now we even have politicians in suits over open-necked shirts. They look scruffy. They can’t carry it off. But if nothing else, they prove that there is no reason for Australia to become a republic. If anything, we in Britain now thrill at the thought that our Head of State is the Queen of Australia.