SUCCESSIVE British governments owe the ancient emperors of Rome a major debt of gratitude. To the rest of us, the Romans bequeathed an effective legal system, modern roads, sophisticated construction techniques and user-friendly guides to holding bacchanals within a robust health and safety framework.

To the world’s captains and kings, though, the old Roman rulers left something much more valuable: the means by which you can divert the attention of punterae idioticus while you are fleecing them or sending thousands of their loved ones to their deaths in imperial adventures. The satirist Juvenal referred to these as bread and circuses, “panem et circenses” in a poem lamenting how easily Roman citizens could be bought by cheap food and lavish public entertainments, some of which could last for up to 135 days.

No one is quite sure how long the Festival of Britain, announced by Theresa May last week and slated for January, 2022, is intended to last. If you take into account the dutiful softening-up process in the Unionist media and the aftermath in which gushing praise for the event will be endless, I’d say its actual duration could be measured in years rather than days.

Six years after the event we’re still being told how the opening ceremony of the London Olympics in 2012 was a glorious celebration of Britannia and all its values. Few have named it for what it was: an expensive and desperate propaganda job by the British state to soften up punterae idioticus prior to the referendum on Scottish independence and the vote to leave the EU.

Yes, yes, yes, I know that both of these events were still a couple of years in the distance but the sense of joyful, love-a-duck, forelock-tipping, Union Jack exuberance laid the foundations for something more sinister in the run-up to the EU referendum.

Even wur Britannic Majesty, the Queen, was persuaded to participate in the charade. Elizabeth and her family of millionaire property tycoons, jewellery collectors, soft-furnishing enthusiasts and toy soldiers know their cue when comes the time to pretend they’re all in it with us rather than being kept by us. It’s a small price to pay for being allowed to wear all those decorations on their toytown military uniforms. They know, as so do the generals and lieutenant-colonels who bow at their feet, that so long as Britain maintains its unique 250-year-old record of continuous military engagement the citizenry will be too tired to revolt. Either that or they’ll be too busy fighting the fuzzy-wuzzies in some fresh war of adventure for reasons unknown or long-forgotten to care about multi-deprivation, austerity, food-banks, tax evasion by the rich and health inequality.

The working classes of other nations staged revolutions when they encountered conditions such as these. In Britain we catch an early train to join the crowds at Buckingham Palace or we queue for tickets to see Usain Bolt. And if there’s a lull between military campaigns or sporting festivals then the royals will do that other thing they’re all good at: getting married; having children and getting David Bailey to take their photographs for the newspapers. It’s a winning formula for a captive audience.

We are now all familiar with the narrative that accompanies these festivals: that the billions spent in assembling these games and pantomimes are justified by the stimulus they provide for British industry and the overall physical health of the nation. Not many of the 2012 Olympic contracts trickled down to Scotland though, or England’s north-east. Four years after our own Commonwealth Games I’d have expected to see the citizens of the east end of Glasgow running around Shettleston like those moustachioed tubes in the 118 adverts.

Sales of fruit and vegetables would have shot through the roof of Tesco while the monks of Buckfast Abbey would be diversifying into the fruit smoothie market. Aye, right. Health inequality, early mortality rates and drug and alcohol addiction remain as high as ever in those neighbourhoods which have been enduring them for more than a century.

The Prime Minister is well-versed in the favoured lexicon for announcing British bread and circuses. Mrs May wants this to be a “post-Brexit” Festival of Great Britain and Northern Ireland which is being billed as an event to show off Britain’s business, technology, culture, sport and arts expertise to the rest of the world. The Prime Minister said: “We want to capture that spirit for a new generation, celebrate our nation’s diversity and talent and mark this moment of national renewal with a once-in-a-generation celebration.”

I’m intrigued by the deployment here of the phrase “once-in-a-lifetime”. In Britain no gap of more than three or four years is allowed to elapse between royal weddings, births and anniversaries; military commemorations and sporting festivals. If the ancient Romans had had as many of these they wouldn’t have had the time or energy to get further than the Amalfi coast in their global military peregrinations.

In the same year, Britain will also celebrate the Queen’s platinum jubilee as well as the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham. We’ve also got the centenary of the BBC and the 75th anniversary of the Edinburgh International and Fringe Festival. The year 2022 couldn’t be any more British if we found some dodgy third world republic to invade. I’m sure MI6 could arrange to put a rogue military junta in place somewhere in west Africa so that we could invade it in the summer of 2022 and restore democracy. I’d also be having a word with the younger royal couples to ensure that there’s a royal baby that year too. Perhaps they could draw lots for the privilege.

Mrs May is being very astute in this undertaking. She knows that in the post-Brexit apocalypse the British elites who led the nation into the chaos will require every artifice and lever at its disposal to ensure that the lie of British greatness continues to float. Who knows; perhaps France and the rest of the EU nations could be persuaded to let the lorries through unhindered ... just for the duration of the festival, you understand.

I also salute Mrs May’s spirit of optimism and indefatigability. The prospect of being able to call this a Festival of Great Britain and Northern Ireland come 2022 is a remote one. I’d be tempted to commission memorabilia with an emblem that says simply: Festival of England ... just in case.