If, like me, you spend too much time on social media you’ll have noticed a recurring theme in recent days: horror at the phenomenon of flags with the cross of St George starting to appear across much of the country.
That’s hardly a surprise; social media has always been awash with left-wing types, for whom patriotism is racism under a different name, and who seem to do nothing but parrot all the usual dull cliches. But today’s version of those cliches turns out to be interesting – because it reveals a double standard so jarring as to be off the scale.
The England flag is upsetting only to those who choose to be upset by it
It was back in 2014 that Emily Thornberry tweeted a now legendary picture of a house with three England flags draped across the front, with the caption ‘Image from #Rochester’. If ever a picture could be said to sneer, this was it – and it cost Thornberry her job as shadow Attorney General. Fast forward to August 2025 and the sneering has deepened into something more accusatory: the assertion that flag flying is a sign not just of racism but of fascism, far-right sympathies and support for violent attacks on minorities.
Take Marina Purkiss, a reliably ranty X type who is ever-present on talk shows and phone-ins. Purkis has skillfully developed her brand, such that she now has 483,000 followers on X. This week she posted: ‘No one gives a f*ck about your flag…But we give a f*ck about the hate-mongering vitriol that compelled you to plant it.’
Another ever-reliable ranter is Narinder Kaur, who posted this on X: ‘This platform and the country as a whole seems to be on the edge of some sort of fascist-racist-flag flying-for-the-wrong-reasons boiling pot of hate!’
One is reminded of George Orwell’s line that ‘England is perhaps the only great country whose intellectuals are ashamed of their own nationality’, although it’s unlikely he had the likes of Purkiss or Kaur in mind. Can the same be said of Guardian columnist John Harris? His latest column takes 1,300 words to make similar points to those made by Purkiss and Kaur in their brief tweets: ‘Flags as symbols of prejudice, not pride – and a distinct air of menace. Welcome to England 2025. The rapid spread of these banners is unsettling – and shows how the hard right is reaching people and places the left cannot.’ He writes:
Despite claims that it is all about patriotism rather than prejudice, what has materialised up and down the country feels like an unauthorised version of what the Home Office used to call the hostile environment, as if football hooligans have taken control of road markings and street furniture… it marks yet another instalment of a story that could not be more serious: the long march of a politics full of audacity and ambition… But also bear in mind something much more frightening: the fact that what is afoot goes far deeper than the manoeuvrings of politicians and parties. It goes into the cultural spaces where people live their lives.
But one sentence is especially revealing because it exposes that double standard I referred to earlier:
The prominence of Palestine flags at this year’s festivals proves that music’s radical edges have not been completely blunted; even the most apolitical artists surely understand that what they do is a product of exactly the kind of cultural mixing and open attitudes that the new right wants to squash.
Harris devotes an entire column to suggesting how ‘unsettling’ it is that the England flag is being flown, but at the same time how wonderful it is that the Palestinian flag is now prominent. There you have it, in all its stark, hypocritical bluntness: England flag = bad. Palestinian flag = good.
It has – let’s be charitable – presumably not occurred to Harris, and to the others who berate the flying of the England flag but celebrate that of the Palestinian, that the prominence of the latter is genuinely frightening for British Jews. The flag is flown on the regular hate marches, where some marchers celebrate the massacre of 1,200 Jews on 7 October 2023. It’s flown on those marches alongside chants calling for the expulsion of Jews from Israel and for a global intifada – the murder of Jews. And it is flown in neighbourhoods where its presence is in effect a sign that Jews are not welcome. But who cares, eh? It’s only Jews being frightened by Jew hate and, as David Baddiel pointed out in his eponymous book, Jews don’t count.
The England flag is upsetting only to those who choose to be upset by it, and to see an expression of patriotism as race hate. But if you want to fly a flag that, while it of course symbolises the Palestinian cause, also symbolises hate against Jews, for many on the left that’s just fine.
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