Is the Last Night on its last legs?

When even the Tories have ditched 'Land of Hope and Glory', says Anna Picard, it's got to be time for change

This Saturday, in what is one of the most widely broadcast and accessible classical music events in the world, the BBC Promenade Concerts will finally draw to a close. Whether you choose to spend the hour before this in the company of pianist Leif Ove Andsnes – in the Albert Hall and on BBC2 – or Terry Wogan, in Hyde Park, is up to you. But for the vast majority of the Last Night's greatly inflated audience – at home, abroad, in the Albert Hall, or at the various open-air relays – eight weeks of diverse orchestral, choral and chamber music from over four different continents and centuries will be summed up in one eccentric iconic singalong.

If a nation's culture is its mirror, the Last Night of the Proms (LNOP) is a funfair distortion of modern Britain. Its veneration of outmoded aesthetics and values is without parallel across the arts; a gesture as bizarre as awarding this year's Booker Prize to Rudyard Kipling or the Turner Prize to, well, Turner. Yet, through a combination of aggressive marketing and media hype, the least representative concert of an ambitious, wide-ranging international orchestral festival has become the flagship for British music-making, as indelibly associated with our perceived national mentality as marmalade or warm beer. LNOP may not do much for our musical reputation but gosh, it's a successful brand.

In taxi journeys home from the several dozen different Proms I've reviewed since writing for this paper, the conversation invariably goes like this: "What's on at the Albert Hall then?" "The Proms." "Oh, 'Land of Hope and Glory!'" So I asked one taxi driver – Rob, aged 29, from Chelmsford, whose cab was sporting two flags of St George – what he thought of the Last Night itself. "Never seen it, love," he said. What never? "Nope." So why the English flags? "It's left over from the football." And does he feel uncomfortable or elated when he hears "Rule Britannia?" "I feel great," he said, "providing we've scored a goal."

Had I asked one of Rob's older colleagues, one whose father had fought in the war perhaps, I might have got a different answer. For Rachel, whose grandparents kissed the ground at Tilbury Docks after escaping from the Lithuanian pogroms, "Land of Hope and Glory" represents the defeat of Nazism. But the further each generation moves from a direct experience of the British Empire or World War Two, the less there is a sense that patriotism can find popular expression outside of sport. Though George Orwell, writing in 1940, claimed that "all the boasting and flag-waving, the 'Rule Britannia' stuff, is done by small minorities," the removal of "Rule Britannia" and "Land of Hope and Glory" from last year's Last Night in the wake of 9/11 caused outrage among a loud minority.

Despite their uncomfortable associations with nationalism, cultural supremacism and colonial bellicosity, these songs remain pivotal to the identity of Britain's most famous musical event.

As the late novelist and essayist Angela Carter said of that other great patriotic standard "There'll Always be an England", "this is an England enshrined in foreign stereotypes of the comic toff, milord, district commissioner or sahib." Small wonder that "Land of Hope and Glory" was satirised on a sitar in the BBC's dubious Raj-com It Ain't Half Hot, Mum.

Certainly, LNOP cannot be said to bring out the best in people. When successive conductors from Sir Colin Davis to Mark Elder have voiced discomfort with the programme's militaristic overtones, they have met with fierce resistance. In the case of American maestro Leonard Slatkin – who presided over last year's altered programme and will be conducting this season's finale – that resistance has assumed a profoundly xenophobic quality. For some of the hard-core Prommers these xenophobic excesses are difficult to stomach. As one arena regular, whose own Last Night will be on Friday, told me: "This flag-waving and tub-thumping is jingoistic, embarrassing and acutely anti-musical. When even the Conservative party has dropped "Land of Hope and Glory", one has to wonder why this country's greatest musical institution continues to cherish it."

Why indeed? When classical music is in crisis over the apparent indifference of a younger audience, it seems deeply ironic that the most visible classical concert in the calendar should be this one. Not only are the politics distasteful and the presentation almost parodic of classical music's perceived stuffiness, the music is second-rate. But patriotic songs are rarely great pieces of music. With the notable exceptions of "The Star-Spangled Banner", the Marseillaise, and the powerfully lugubrious Russian national anthem, the melodies of most national anthems are unmemorable dross – though "God Save the Queen", as Christopher Hitchens notes, at least "commends itself for its brevity".

So, if there's little musical value to be found in these songs, is LNOP just an excuse for middle-brow, middle-class, middle-aged hooliganism? Orwell would have seen this question as an example of "the mechanical sniggers of the Bloomsbury highbrow", but, as the indignant response from the Italian community to a recent recording of mafia songs has proved, unease with aspects of one's heritage is not an exclusively English preoccupation. Music is powerfully associative; hence many people's mistaken assumption that "Deutschland, Deutschland über alles ..." is still the first line of the German national anthem. To pretend that nationalist songs of whatever provenance are "just a bit of harmless fun", as some have said, is to overlook their historical significance. And here's the rub. Should you want to express solidarity to your place of birth, there is no means of doing so in song without reference to empire, monarchy or the past.

Except, perhaps, through "Jerusalem", the only number on the LNOP's song sheet that admits this nation still has room for improvement. Who knows if we can ever attain William Blake's utopia in this "green and pleasant land"? But if we can address this unwieldy tradition head on, we may at least have made a start. Whatever one's feelings on the British Empire, the most contentious items in LNOP are eminently replaceable by works that evoke a less bellicose national identity; from Purcell to Tallis to Britten to Holst to Vaughan Williams. It's time to move on from our colonial past. To invite other orchestras to this grand finale. To play music of a more thoughtful and pacific nature. Last year's Last Night was no blip: it was a sign that traditions can adapt and survive. If the Last Night of the Proms is to be more than museum culture, it must, like the Conservative party, stop pandering to the musical tastes of Colonel Blimp and look to a wider demographic.

Prom 73, The Last Night, Royal Albert Hall, London SW7 (020 7589 8212), Sat; live on BBC2 (Part 1) and BBC1 (Part 2)