WELL DONE, Britain. We win. Three minutes, eh? That surely clinches it. When this nation falls silent for a whole 180 seconds at noon on Wednesday, we will have shown the world the way once more.

We may no longer lead in the fields of industry and technology, our film industry may be a joke, our once proud pop charts full of infantile pap, but when it comes to grief — altogether now: We’re number one! We’re number one!

Boris had it right. Except it is not Liverpool that is addicted to sorrow, but the entire country, taking its example from the ghoulish opportunists at the top. The day after the tsunami disaster our Government put us down for a million quid in aid.

Humiliated when this turned out to be what Norwich City, West Bromwich Albion and their mates had raised, it upped it to £15 million. Belittled and outbid by the generosity of the public, it closed on £50 million. As a result, the Government’s aid effort unfolded like an auction on eBay. Classy.

So now silence is golden. Tessa Jowell, the Culture Secretary, has announced that there will be three minutes of it this week, with flags on government buildings at half mast. That will show them. There has been no guideline yet on whether lip trembling will be compulsory or how the Government intends dealing with those whose minds wander during the last 45 seconds, but do not underestimate them. People who can come up with grief grading are capable of anything.

What was wrong with one minute, or two? In considering the human devastation endured by the unfortunates around the Indian Ocean, who needs three minutes to get their act together?

This is a silence for those who think the First and Second World Wars didn’ t quite cut it. Who felt 9/11 came close, but no cigar. It is an unprecedented silence, a groundbreaking silence. In years to come this silence will be the benchmark against which other silences are judged. The tsunami has changed the world for ever. League tables on charity donations — which entirely undermine the generous spirit of the British public by giving the impression we were involved and motivated by some form of competition — and now this.

Our Government has turned us into the national equivalent of the John Lewis department store. We are never knowingly under-hushed.