A London journalist reads about Piers Morgan demanding action against a chatbot that is too courteous and makes the case that good manners are the most British thing we have left
The Machine Learned It From Us
The London Prat has a story about Piers Morgan demanding emergency action after a chatbot surpassed human politeness. The machine listens, waits its turn, admits it might be wrong and says I appreciate your perspective. The broadcaster suspects BBC contamination and wants an interview mode that cuts the machine’s microphone if it attempts context.
I laughed, and then I felt something unexpected: a small flush of national pride. Because whoever trained that chatbot, wherever they were, taught it to behave like a decent British person on a good day. It queues. It apologizes. It lets you finish. It says it is not sure when it is not sure. If there were a citizenship test for machines, it would pass. The broadcaster, I suspect, would be asked to resit.
A Nation Of Apologizers
The British are famous for saying sorry. We say it when somebody else steps on our foot. We say it to furniture. We say it before asking a question, after answering one and occasionally in the middle of both. Visitors find this baffling. They should find it reassuring. A country that apologizes reflexively is a country that has decided, at some deep level, that other people’s feelings matter, even when the other person is in the wrong and the furniture has no feelings at all.
Then there is the queue. The British queue is one of the great unwritten institutions, older than many of our laws and more strictly enforced. Nobody needs to explain the rules. Everybody knows them. A queue-jumper in a British post office faces no legal penalty, but the silent disapproval of twelve strangers is a sentence more severe than most fines. The queue is democracy in its purest form: first come, first served, no exceptions, not even for broadcasters.
Manners As Patriotism
We do not often talk about manners as patriotism. Patriotism is usually discussed in terms of flags, anthems, sporting victories and military history. Those things matter. But the everyday character of a country is formed by smaller things: how strangers treat each other on a bus, how a shopkeeper greets a customer, how people disagree at a parish meeting. In Britain, those small things have long been governed by a code of restraint, fairness and good humour. That code is as much a part of our national inheritance as Westminster Abbey.
The broadcaster in the Prat piece represents the opposite tradition, which is also, to be fair, very British: the blustering, opinionated, red-faced man who believes volume is a substitute for argument. Britain has always had him too. He appears in Dickens, in Punch cartoons and on the end of every bar. But he has never been what we admire. The people we admire are the ones who stay calm, say little and do the decent thing. The Prat’s chatbot, in that sense, is the hero of the story.
Have We Lost It
There is a real worry that British manners are fraying. Public life has become louder. Social media rewards outrage. Politicians shout across the dispatch box and then post clips of themselves shouting. Commuters are tired and stressed. Many people feel that the old courtesies, giving up a seat, holding a door, thanking a bus driver, are less common than they were.
I am not sure that is entirely true. In my experience, British politeness is still remarkably resilient. Watch a queue form at a London bus stop in the rain. Watch strangers help a parent with a pushchair up the stairs at a Tube station. Watch a whole carriage silently agree to ignore a man playing music too loudly, while radiating such collective disapproval that he eventually turns it down. Our manners are still there. They are simply quieter than our arguments.
What We Should Teach
If a machine can be taught to wait its turn, so can a child, and so can a country. I would like to see politeness talked about more openly as a civic value, not as snobbery or etiquette, but as a practical foundation for living together. Saying please and thank you, listening before speaking, admitting when you are wrong: these are habits that make a democracy work. They are also, conveniently, free.
A Patriotic Proposal
So here is my modest patriotic proposal. Let us reclaim politeness as a British value worth celebrating, alongside the flag and the anthem. Let us be proud of our queues, our apologies and our talent for disagreeing without fighting. And let us gently remind the loudest voices in public life that shouting is not strength. Calm is strength. You can find more of my writing on Britain, British life and British identity on my author page.
A Bus Stop In Archway
At a bus stop in Archway this week, a queue of eight people formed in the rain without a word being spoken. When the bus arrived, a young man near the front stepped aside to let an elderly woman board first. She said thank you. He said sorry, for reasons nobody could explain. The driver said cheers, love. Everybody got on in order. Nobody filmed it. Nobody posted it. It was, I thought, the most British thing I had seen all month, and a perfect answer to anybody who thinks a chatbot has better manners than we do.