By Andrew Stuttaford
Monday, August 25, 2025
The U.K. appears to be sliding toward profound economic and, quite possibly,
political crisis. Just one of the symptoms of the latter has been a campaign to
put up (mainly) English or British national flags (a distinction that matters in Britain’s increasingly
fraught political debate). The other day I quoted an article by Aris Roussinos in
UnHerd, in which he observed (among other points) this:
In England, flags are re-adopting
a territorial nationalist or communitarian quality, just as they always have in
Northern Ireland and as is increasingly the case with the Palestine flag in
South Asian Muslim areas of Britain.
Some local authorities have reacted by taking down these
flags, which, whatever might be thought of that on the merits, they are
entitled to do when the flags are on public property — although in some cases
they seem to have been quicker to do so than when the flags in question were
Palestinian. Odd!
Dan Hannan in the Daily Telegraph:
Over the past week, we have seen the Ulsterisation of numerous English towns.
St George’s Crosses and Union flags have appeared on lamp-posts. Websites have
been promoting and keeping track of this pennanted profusion. One reports that
50,000 English and British flags were sold in three days.
The St George’s Crosses are
largely a reaction to the Palestinian flags that have become widespread in
parts of our cities. In the early days of the Gaza war, PLO colours signalled
support for the Palestinian movement. But, as the months passed, they became
territorial markers in Muslim-majority areas.
Just as in Northern Ireland
during the Troubles, you can now infer the demographics of an area by its
banners. . . .
There are allegations of
double-standards: local councils are said to be rushing to tear down the St
George’s Crosses while leaving the Palestinian flags untouched. . . .
Our country used to be known
around the world as civil and orderly. But the social capital that sustained
those virtues has been drained by official multi-culturalism and the deliberate
slandering of our past. . . .
None of this needed to happen to
Great Britain. We did not lose a war or suffer a violent social revolution. We
have done it to ourselves through woolly thinking, virtue-signalling and
cowardice. The country I love is disappearing.
Patrick West in The Spectator:
Some might rejoice that the
ethnic English now feel sufficiently bold to assert themselves after decades of
neglect and opprobrium. Yet the fact that photographs of southwest Birmingham
or east London now recall past images of loyalist east Belfast should also
arouse disquiet. With a profusion of Palestine flags across the land also
denoting the establishment of ethnic fiefdoms administered by ‘community
leaders’, we are witnessing the partition of urban landscapes into territories
along sectarian lines. . . .
For years we were told to
celebrate multiculturalism unreservedly. While most still abide to a tolerant,
liberal attitude in regard to living alongside different peoples in the same
country, only a remote elite still cling to multiculturalism as a state-promoted
ideology, one that only leads to more division.
To be fair, that elite is not so remote as to be unaware
that its message is not being received with universal delight. This fact goes a
long way to explaining Britain’s increasingly draconian crackdown on free
speech, a crackdown that (mainly) has its origins in Tony Blair’s disastrous
premiership, but which was encouraged and/or enabled by the Conservatives
during their years in “power,” and has now been taken to the next level by the
authoritarians running the current Labour government.
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