Kate Bush: the campaign starts here.

Reader, this woman must represent this nation!

As we all know, Steve Does Comics rarely ventures into the realms of Politics, viewing such a pursuit as the first refuge of the scoundrel. However, sometimes an issue raises its head, an issue so vital that even I can't ignore it. So it is that I have to announce I've launched a government e-petition calling for Kate Bush's Oh England, My Lionheart to be the official English National Anthem. I'm sure you're aware that if a government e-petition gets 100,000 signatures it has to be debated in parliament and thus might become law.

But why? I hear you ask.

Well, the truth is that no one knows more than me the power of a National Anthem to unite people. One of my happiest childhood memories is of the communal mass scramble to flee the cinema before the National Anthem started. Hundreds of total strangers united in one cause - escape.

While the plucky Scots and Welsh have their own National Anthem, England still doesn't, relying on the horror that is God Save the Queen. Leaving aside the fact it's presumptuous for us to use the UK anthem as the English anthem, it's such a rotten song, a one-note dirge that no one knows the words to beyond the first verse. Everything after that verse just seems to be an exhortation to kill the Scots. This is clearly not a good thing.

Admittedly, during those dense, dark months of 1994 when Wet Wet Wet were Number 1 for 87 consecutive weeks, such a course of action suddenly seemed tempting - but then I look into the eyes of Wee Jimmy Krankie and think how could we do it? How could we take the life of that innocent child whose life has barely begun?

Clearly therefore, if only for Jimmy Krankie's sake, England needs a National Anthem of its very own.

Unfortunately the contenders that people always put forward tend to be bombastic shouty nonsense about global supremacy and killing even more foreigners, or are on the geographically-challenged side. Not only that, they're the sort of things that get played at The Last Night of the Proms, thus multiplying their misery-inducing powers a hundredfold. Therefore I've decided it's vital that, before anyone can inflict one of those songs on us, we need to head them off at the pass by demanding an actual good song as the National Anthem. Therefore I'm proposing Kate Bush's gentle tribute to all things Englishness.

Unlike those other songs about crushing people, Oh England, My Lionheart is about the last thoughts of a Spitfire pilot as his plane crashes towards the ground. This is appropriate, as watching an England World Cup campaign is like watching a plane crashing - very slowly. Amazingly, despite being launched only last night, and me not yet having told anyone about it, the petition's already got two signatures. I'm assuming one of them's me. I don't have a clue who the other person is but, whoever you are, if you're reading this, thank you for your support.

As for you, Dear Reader; if you want an actual good song as a National Anthem, please sign the petition. If you want something that isn't a rampant exercise in bombastic nationalism, please sign the petition. If you're a Kate Bush fan, please sign the petition. If you hate Kate Bush, please sign it, because she doesn't like the song and therefore you'll probably annoy her. Most of all. If you want to ruin The Last Night of the Proms, please sign it. The petition in question can be signed here: http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/12159.