On Plastic Patriots And Being Frightened To Fly The Flag.
Those hoisting the flags for ‘Operation Raise the Colours’ said they were expressing national pride. Opponents called it racist. My heart still cheers when I see them flying. If nothing else, we have very pretty flags. What’s wrong with a bit of patriotism?
YouGov dipped its finger into the swirling pot of UK sentiment and discovered that 52% of ethnic minority adults now consider the St George’s flag a racist symbol. If that’s hard to wrap your head around — that people who chose to move here for everything this country offers find England’s own flag offensive — brace yourself for this: so do 36% of white adults.
Oh well. At least they’re honest, unlike Sir Sneer Starmer, who is particularly illiterate when it comes to reading the room. He tweeted:
“St George’s flag stands for unity over hatred and decency over division. Those are the values I will always fight for. Some try to hijack our flag to spread hate. I reject their plastic patriotism.”
I’m sorry — when exactly did our national flag come to stand for “unity” and “decency”?
It is, first and foremost, a red cross: a Christian symbol, reflecting our Christian heritage. The red on white was the colour scheme of the Crusaders — funny how the Prime Minister neglected to mention that. And St George himself is bound up in the chivalric ideals of Christian faith, courage, honour, and the protection of the weak.
Back to school, Keir.
Rather than watering down — or, to put it plainly, lying about — the flag’s symbolism to make it more palatable to those who find it troubling, why not simply tell the truth? The values our flag actually represents are rather magnificent. They don’t need softening. They need championing.
But the richest irony of all is Starmer’s use of the word plastic. Sir Polystermer himself could not be more plastic if he tried — hollow, synthetic, and moulded into whatever shape the room requires.
We’ve been debating whether to fly the Union flag outside our house. We haven’t quite managed it yet — which is, I know, rather feeble. We live in an ethnically mixed area, and we have a nagging anxiety that some of YouGov’s 52% or 36% might take it the wrong way. That fear alone tells you something has gone badly wrong.
As it happens, I was rather relieved last week that we hadn’t hoisted the colours.
I arrived home to find a man kneeling on the pavement outside our house, shoes off beside him. “What are you doing?” I asked, in my best school-ma’am voice and took a photograph.
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