The Prime Minister is expected to trot out a familiar line on Friday: the St George’s Cross and the Union Flag are “for all of us”, symbols of unity. It sounds noble enough, but let’s be brutally honest. If politicians truly believed that, they wouldn’t have spent years allowing the flag to be smeared, distorted and deliberately tied to extremism.
Every time the ‘far right’ unfurls the national flag, the press falls over itself to declare it tainted. “Look!” they scream. “The flag has become a symbol of hate!” But that’s a lie by omission. The flag hasn’t changed meaning, the commentary around it has.
Let’s be really clear: people on the far right don’t believe they’re wielding a hate symbol. They believe they’re being patriotic. Agree with them or not, that is how they see it. But rather than acknowledging that, politicians and journalists twist the narrative. They pretend the fabric itself is dangerous, a shorthand for extremism.
Why? Because it’s easier to smear the symbol than to deal with the grievances of the people flying it.
A flag cannot hate. It cannot exclude. It cannot divide. It is politicians, the media and the left who load it with those meanings, because they want to make patriotism itself suspicious. If the Union Flag can be permanently associated with the “far right”, then anyone who dares fly it can be dismissed as a bigot. Job done. Debate over.
And it’s working, Ordinary people now hesitate to fly their own national flag for fear of being judged. St George’s Day passes in a whisper while other national days are loudly celebrated. Children grow up learning that showing pride in Britain is “dodgy”, unless it’s dressed up for a royal wedding or a football match.
That’s not accidental. it’s engineered. Politicians want the flag as a backdrop for photo ops, not as a rallying point for real communities. The media wants the flag as a prop for sensational headlines, not as a living emblem of belonging.
So here’s the real uncomfortable question: who gets to decide what the flag represents? The answer should be obvious, the people of Britain. But right now, the narrative is dictated by elites who are terrified of genuine patriotism, because patriotism demands they actually defend the country’s people, not just its symbols.
If we allow politicians and the media to keep smearing the flag, they will succeed in making patriotism itself a dirty word. And once that’s gone, so is any sense of shared belonging.
The Prime Minister can lecture all he likes about “unity”, but unless we call out this deliberate poisoning of national pride, the flag will remain a weapon used against us instead of a banner carried by all of us.
It’s time to take it back. Not for the far right. Not for the government. But for the people who actually live under it.
@newdaystarts
