The Union Brats were embarrassing yesterday singing for the King as their club imploded..

Yesterday, at the start of our podcast, Eric had a good laugh about the Ibrox fans and how their singing of God Save the King didn’t help them—nor did the disgusting dirge of The Famine Song. I wasn’t entirely sure what he was referring to until I rewatched the highlights this afternoon.

Behind the goal, as they desperately chased an equaliser in the closing moments, you could see the Union Brats with their scarves held high, chanting their song for the monarch.

And now I get why Eric found it so funny. What surprised me was going onto Ibrox fan forums today and finding some of their fans genuinely embarrassed by that moment. Genuinely embarrassed that, in a game where they were losing 1-0 and heading out of the cup, their most vocal fan group decided that was the appropriate response. And I know exactly what those guys mean.

I’m a socialist. I grew up with socialism being called the politics of envy. It’s still called that now, with the far right pushing the idea that anyone who ascribes to socialism secretly wants to build some version of Soviet Russia.

I’m not going to say these people are too stupid to know the difference—most of them do—but they cling to that association because they think it puts people off embracing socialism itself. The irony is that what they’re really talking about is totalitarian communism, which has more in common with the far right than it does with the left.

But I’ve always believed that socialism embraces merit and the idea of a meritocracy in a way capitalism never has and never will.

Capitalism has a number of fundamental contradictions at its heart. For a start, it supports the principle of inherited wealth. It upholds the idea of a societal elite, many of whom never earned their positions. And in countries like this one, it promotes adherence to royalty, with all that entails.

I’m a Catholic, but religion has never played a major role in my life. You could call me a lapsed Catholic, a disinterested Catholic, or a disassociated Catholic. I attend church for weddings, funerals, and other social occasions, but not regularly.

What I’m saying is, I don’t particularly self-identify by my religion. I have no issue with people of other faiths. In fact, I think the true mark of a bigot is someone who does—who holds prejudice against another person simply because of the God they pray to. Nothing troubles me more than that.

But the peculiar form of Protestantism we have in this country is so contradictory that it’s vaguely hilarious. The word Protestant—one who protests, one who breaks free, one who stands for the self—should be a positive one. As someone who believes in meritocracy, in personal endeavour, in rejecting conformity and embracing differing opinions, I should be able to get behind that.

But militant British Protestantism isn’t like that at all. Ask one of its adherents what they’re marching for in July and what it represents to them, and a lot will tell you it’s about freedom. Freedom from Rome.

That’s what the marching represents. Their ability to walk down the road uncontested. Their right to march, unchallenged by the state or any other institution. That’s what it symbolises. That’s its meaning.

And yet, all that noble sentiment—because there is a certain nobility to it—absolutely collapses when you consider the attitude to monarchy that underpins British Protestantism. Because, of course, the British version is different from what took hold in other parts of Europe, where it really was about rebellion against Rome.

Here, it is irrevocably tied to the rebellion of one man—Henry VIII—who fought against Papal infallibility just he could marry who he wanted. But – and this is what many of them either don’t know or don’t want to know – he spent much of his life regretting his fall out with the Pope and wishing to be reconciled with the Catholic Church. That is a historical fact, whether they believe it or not.

There is so much of their own history they don’t know.

The entire July celebration commemorates a battle in which their side was partially funded by the Vatican, which feared separate Catholic power centres rising to challenge the supremacy of the papal state. William of Orange’s victory was even marked by a special mass in the Vatican itself.

The things they don’t know. There are so many, many things they don’t know.

Even the things they do know, they don’t quite fully grasp—like the significance of the Church of England’s role in their whole cultural ethos.

A friend of mine, Andy McKinnon, once put it in very crude terms during a confrontation with a couple of Ibrox fans. I’ll try to say it as cleanly as I can. He told them that their church only exists because a king wanted to have sex. That’s the best way I can put it—he put it much more bluntly and brutally than that.

I remember bursting out laughing, nearly busting a gut over it. It was funny because of how crudely he phrased it and because of the look on their faces. But it was also funny because it was true. It cut through all the complexities and political justifications and got right to the core of the matter.

British Protestantism has, from its outset, been tied to the supremacy of the Church of England—the one Henry founded. So, when they celebrate freedom, what they’re celebrating is the trading of one dictatorship for another.

At its core, that’s exactly what they did. They got rid of one supreme ruler and put another in his place. It’s not really freedom at all. That’s why it always makes me laugh when right-wing culture warriors here at home criticise our fans for not showing the appropriate respect to the monarchy.

Because really—what is there to respect? And why should we respect it? Hereditary rule? Subjects, not citizens? The idea that some people have an inalienable right to rule over me and mine? Are you kidding? Why should we have even the slightest shred of respect for an idea like that?

Most of the people I know—my people—are socialists. And not for a second do they accept that anyone has the right to rule over them, or anyone else. Where’s the freedom in subservience to a bunch of hereditary freaks?

So, when I see their club embrace this nonsense, when I see them steeped in all this phoney tradition, I just want to laugh.

It’s so absurd that they prattle on about freedom while bending the knee—believing that the people they’re bowing to have some divine right that makes them superior to everyone else. And it’s not just as a socialist that I find that ludicrous, but as someone who values personal freedom and will never voluntarily bow the knee to anyone, far less because of the accident of their birth.

And that, to me, is part of what’s wrong with their club.

It’s why they can’t stand on their own two feet. It’s why they don’t mount any real challenge to their own directors when they feel let down, or to the SFA when they feel cheated, or to the Scottish Government when they believe in the Grand Conspiracy of the Unseen Fenian Hand holding them down.

For all their talk of freedom, for all their talk of individualism, for all their supposed embrace of the philosophies that underpin those things, their entire culture and identity is based on subservience. It is based on waiting to be told what to do by their betters. At its core, it seems to me like a profound inferiority complex.

That’s why I found it so funny when I rewatched the game and saw them pick that moment—when they should have been defiantly, angrily, furiously driving their team forward—to instead offer some pledge of allegiance to a distant, out-of-touch, manchild simpleton who lives in a castle like a Disney villain.

And some of their own supporters—including many who, I am sure, are—were baffled and embarrassed when 5that’s what their fan group chose to do in the closing stages of a match their club simply could not afford to lose.

Eric’s mockery was wholly justified. His contempt was wholly earned.

They are backward, stupid, cringe-worthy fools.

They might express defiance and believe in their supremacy, but by regarding themselves as subjects, they make a mockery of everything they think about themselves and their place in the world.

And it is no wonder that their club is in such a mess when it panders to those barmy ideas and all their incoherence.

Photo by Ian MacNicol/Getty Images

Last night we put up our latest podcast. Recorded just after they went crashing out of the cup, we called it They’re Simply Depressed.