I live near the small Sussex seaside town of Selsey. It’s the sort of place that gets right up the well-bred nose of Labour’s Emily Thornberry with her famous disdain for flag wagging patriotism. For in normal times the many flagpoles in the tidy gardens of the resort are flying the St George’s flag of England, or sometimes the Union Flag.
Not this month however. Suddenly, most of the same poles are sporting the blue and yellow flags of Ukraine. In a touching show of solidarity with that faraway country of which we now know all too much, the patriots of Selsey are putting out more flags to demonstrate their disgust at Putin’s barbaric invasion.
In Ukraine itself, displaying the national flag is ubiquitous: it is everywhere. The people of that suffering country are showing that they are prepared to pay a high price in blood for their love of their own land, and their wish to live in freedom and without fear of foreign domination and occupation.
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