What the rise of the Poppy refusenik tells us about Britain

Is there anyone smugger than the poppy refusenik? I don’t mean people who don’t wear poppies. That’s absolutely fine. Knock yourselves out. I mean people who don’t wear a poppy and who tell everyone they don’t wear a poppy. At every opportunity. ‘It’s poppy-fascism time of year again but I won’t be falling for it because I actually have a brain, unlike you idiots’, they don’t quite say but definitely mean.

Poppy refuseniks have replaced poppy fascists (Jon Snow’s uncouth phrase) as the most irritating people of the Remembrance Day season. Sure, the poppy police who take to internet discussion boards the second they spy a newsreader or celeb sans poppy can be grating. But not nearly as grating as the people who virtually point to their blank, flower-free lapel and declare to any poor sod within a 10-metre radius: ‘Look! No poppy! How cool am I?’

This year the poppy refuseniks are lining up behind Stoke footballer James McClean, who, once again, will be poppy-less at games over the next couple of weeks. McClean is from Derry, a city with a very recent troubled relationship with the British Army. He says he doesn’t wear a poppy out of respect for the victims of the Bloody Sunday massacre of 1972.

I respect McClean’s decision. Footballers are not just lumps of meat who kick a ball around for our entertainment — they are individuals, with individual consciences, and they must enjoy the same right as everyone else to exercise their conscience. What’s more, you get the impression McClean would rather there wasn’t such a fuss around his unwillingness to wear a poppy. His poppy-free football top is not a showy, narcissistic thing, but a quiet, personal statement. The online poppy cops mauling him and calling him ‘Fenian scum’ should be ashamed of themselves.

But then there are the poppy refuseniks who spy in the McClean controversy yet another opportunity to remind us how superior they are.