Gordon Brown just had to go and say it, didn't he? As if the whole Scotland-England-Britain thing wasn't tedious enough already.

A Scotsman is the British Prime Minister and the Olympics have proved a success for Britain this summer and will be coming to London in four years' time, and (yawn) a Scottish cyclist completed Britain's single largest medal haul in Beijing and the Tartan Army booed God Save the Queen at Hampden the other week, but (sheesh!) whose national anthem is it anyway and... and – oh, for goodness sake! Can ANYONE be bothered with this nonsense any more?

I know I can't! So WHY did the PM have to go and suggest there should be a Great Britain football team competing at the next Olympics? A can of worms has just spilled out on to the grass and formed the shape of a Union Jack.

The four oldest football associations in the world are those of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. And it's just a lot easier to say "the four United Kingdom Associations", isn't it?

Yet should this be any more significant than saying "the Baltic States" whenever we have any reason to talk about an issue which involves each of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania? It's flippant to say the footballing beaks in Riga, Tallinn and Vilnius needn’t fear being re-submerged into the auspices of the Soviet Union national XI any time soon despite being part of a collective noun. It's flippant because the most powerful politician in Britain has actually stated a desire to see a Union Jack-wearing XI kicking his own political football at the 2012 Olympic Games.

The home countries have such well-established independence on the world stage, such unique indentities and histories, that surely a one-off amalgam of the four will have all the serious knock-on effect of those "World XIs" which turn out in various testimonials and charity games shown exclusively live on Channel 5.

I haven't seen any subsequent FIFA attempts to abolish all independent national teams in favour of an Earth FA, ready to challenge Mars and Pluto for the Solar System Champions League (sponsored by Coca-Cola).

Again, flippant. I apologise. It's just that we seemed only lately to have finally extricated the last splinters of imperialism from English footballing culture and now it has reared its ugly, shaven head once more – thanks to a flipping Raith Rovers fan!

Euro 96 saw the moment when England, eternally sick of losing to Germany, suddenly decided to reciprocate the xenophobia we Jocks had been throwing over Hadrian's Wall ever since the very first football international was played, at Glasgow in 1872. As Paul Gascoigne's winner was slapped under Andy Goram at Wembley, England's football fans finally abandoned their Britishness and embraced their anti-Scottishness. It seemed to guarantee them better results.

The tidal wave of anti-English sentiment from Scottish crowds has abated slightly in the last few years as we've begun to question our own attitudes to the national team or, rather, to our fixation on another national team.

Just as we were beginning to get a handle on backing Scotland rather than slating England, along come Northern Ireland for a friendly match at Hampden last month. Their massive support is mostly waving Red Hands of Ulster which, of course, IS the Northern Ireland flag. But the sight, familiar to so many members of the Scotland support, was reminiscent of Rangers fans.

Similarly – and more perversely – the sight of so many punters at Hampden wearing green similarly reminded any non-Old Firm club fans on international duty of Celtic fans and their equally tiresome fixation with the Emerald Isle. Bang God Save The Queen on the tannoy system and – BINGO! – anti-Old Firm sentiment is as prevalent as anti-English, anti-Northern Ireland or anti-British sentiment.

Not since beating the mighty Taiwan by the odd goal in five during the 1960 games in Rome have Britain risked setting the precedent by which UEFA or FIFA could merge our four football associations. Ironically, this was the same year in which the first ever European Championship finals took place and the UK nations, who had all qualified for the World Cup finals in Sweden two years earlier, singularly refused to take any part or interest.

If all of them qualify for the 2012 European Championship it would certainly reinforce and justify their long-held independence in soccer's parallel political world. It would also show up a GB Olympic team for what it really should be – nothing more than a pleasant one-off diversion, a hospitable footballing freak show put on as much for the tourists as the locals.

The trouble is, FIFA would tell us "you've done it before so now do it all the time" and, before we know it, Great Britain's representative soccer side would become the Spanish national team.

Mind you, when Spain played the final of the 1992 Olympic soccer tournament in Catalonia's heartbeat stadium, the Nou Camp, 95,000 turned up to watch them win it. And, after this summer's European Championship, I might be tempted by the idea of a Great Britain national side if it could guarantee me seeing a Scottish Rangers player lifting the Henri Delaunay trophy or the World Cup... and tying a Saltire around it!