Times they are a changin'

Over the years I've grown sadly accustomed to the English flag being described as a racist symbol, divisive, uninclusive, you name it. The past few weeks have been little different, with various morons popping their heads up over the parapets of their ivory towers to decry the use of our age-old national flag.

DFH reports:

In recent days we’ve heard that the flying of England flags could result in charges of assault, that they frighten horses, contravene advertising regulations, upset Muslims, disturb the delicate multicultural paradise of Salford and cause global warming. It’s only a matter of time before someone links the flag to AIDS, cancer and avian flu.

The miserable bleating of these ignorant, and often bigoted morons (would they try to censure the flying of another nation's flag?), has become even more absurd due to the sheer abundance of England flags that abound; England is a riot of red and white, with flags flown in every corner. To say that the naysayers are swimming against an English tide of self-awareness and patriotism would be an understatement. To quote the a letter to the Independent:

Sir: Mr Pattison (Letter, 25 May) reports many members of ethnic minorities flying the flag of St George. This despite repeated government efforts to promote Britishness. It suggests to me that the Union flag, curtseying to the Queen, and having faith in the Home Office, are dysfunctional and unfit for purpose. On the streets, Britishness unites no one.

It's true. The Government et, al. are slamming the door to the Britishness stable after the horse has bolted. The only tactic left at the disposal of the stableboys now seems to be in claiming that people that wave the English flag are idiots, as in the case of the inverse barometer of public opinion, The Guardian:

Rejoice! Thanks to the national obsession with football, the cross of St George has finally been reclaimed from the racists. Nowadays, when you see an England flag on a car, sprawled across a T-shirt, or flapping from a novelty hat, you no longer assume the owner is a dot-brained xenophobe. Instead you assume he’s just an idiot. And you’re right. He is.

One snob seized upon this daft article to claim that the English flag was the mark of the über chav.

I consider myself neither a chav nor an idiot. Yes I will fly the flag in support of my football team, but, more importantly, I will fly it as a political statement; a message to Brown and the other purveyors of anti-English rhetoric that England is still here. And here's proof that I do...

Regardless of whether the objections stem from snobbishness, anti-Englishness, Unionism, left-wing self-loathing or some daft notion that the flag is 'racist' (how can an inanimate object be racist?) the tired old bigotry is at last beginning to wear a bit thin.We can see the tide changing before our very eyes. Take a gander at the true barometer of public opinion, read eagerly by chavs and Tony Blair's press secretaries alike, The Sun:

Suddenly, the Government, who for years have been conducting ideological warefare against the very idea of Englishness, come over all English. First up was the Tessa Jowell (Secretary of State, Department for Culture, Media & Sport) who, like some über chav, decided to fly the English flag from her ministerial car.

Incredible! But that's just for starters, we're not even warmed up yet. Step up to the plate Richard Caborn MP (Sports minister) and ex-Home Secretary David Blunkett:

Sports minister Richard Caborn and former Cabinet minister David Blunkett have blasted critics who say people should not fly the England flag for fear of upsetting ethnic minorities. They say the flag is not a symbol of racism but a sign of national pride. The pair spoke amid criticism the flag could upset some members of the community, and after some companies banned their employees from flying the flag. Mr Caborn, MP for Sheffield Central, said: "I don't think it's nationalistic nonsense. I think it's fantastic and I think getting behind the team, or indeed the cricket team, well it's great we have got that patriotism. "There is great pride in our nation and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. I am absolutely sure it has an effect on the team." Mr Blunkett, MP for Sheffield Brightside, added: "Don't listen to the clever dicks who thing the English flag is common. Ignore the politically correct clowns who reckon the red cross of St George is a racist symbol that will upset ethnic minorities."....He said if people didn't like people being patriotic about football they could go and "watch the shopping channel or catch the first bus to Scotland [thinnly veiled attack on Gordon Brown] while the rest of us wallow in the glory of success".

What the deuce! What could have precipitated such a sea-change in attitudes? Could the Sun really have so much influence as to have caused hastily scribbled Blair memos to be shuttled down the corridors of power to cabinet ministers? Er.....yes....

Surrender! At last! For you, Blair, the culture war is over. Downing Street yesterday ran up the white flag - the one with the red cross on it. For the period of the World Cup, said a cowed Labour spokesman, the emblem of St George would fly from No 10. Across England yesterday there were still Leftist forces that were keeping up resistance, oblivious to the Hirohito-like capitulation of the high command. In the country's Labour-controlled urban jungles, the culture warriors fought on with the pointlessness of Japanese privates lost in Burma in 1945.

It's not quite game set and match - not until the Scots are banned from voting on English legislation and the English flag flies from an English parliament - but this capitulation by the Government, a capitualtion that has its roots at No.10, is little more than a tacit acknowledgement that I and my colleagues in the CEP have been correct all along. Is this the beginning of a the civic nationalism for England that I have been calling for? Maybe I am counting my chickens too early, maybe not.

The burning question now is how Brown will react. Can the Scottish prime minister-in-waiting swallow his arrogant pride long enough to hoist the English flag outside the Treasury? It's the very question that Boris Johnson asks in today's Telegraph:

It is fashionable to say that the West Lothian question is just a "beltway" issue. But wherever I go I find people who instinctively understand the absurdity that Tony Blair is set to transfer power to Gordon Brown - with all the democratic accountability of the transition from Claudius to Nero - and that Gordon Brown, a Scottish MP, will be able to impose very controversial measures on English constituencies, when English MPs have no corresponding say over those questions in Scotland, and when (the crowning absurdity) he, Gordon, will have no say over those questions in so far as they affect his own constituents.

That is why poor Gordon gnaws his nails, and looks with ever more despair at the growing Labour claque for the English postman Alan Johnson, a claque that I now officially join, not least since he is probably a distant cousin and we Johnsons must stick together.

That is why Gordon now announces, pathetically, that he will be supporting the English team, and that is why I have no doubt that before the World Cup is out poor Gordon will have been bullied by the actions of his neighbour into submission.

Tony has pledged to fly the flag. Will Gordon have the nerve to do the same? Will Gordon have the nerve to resist? Yes, my friends, such will be the hysteria over the next few days that I predict that we will eventually see the hilarious and pitiful spectacle of the England flag being raised over No 11 as well. Gordon will put his ambition before his national feeling, to the derision of his fellow Scotsmen.

The Labour classes will finally bow to the masses and in the matter of the flag the masses are right. The prevalence and success of this cross shows how wrong and how misguided the multiculturalists have been, in the past 30 years, to try to suppress national symbols, and how powerful a flag can be in uniting a country rather than dividing it. Oh yes: I almost forgot. Everyone, whatever their race, creed, colour, is also flying the flag because they want England to beat Paraguay on Saturday.

The Government has lost the war on England and has started to march to the same tune as the über chav and idiot (or proletariat as Brown might call them), and it's very hard to see how a prime minister from a Scottish seat can pick up the drum and maintain the rhythm. We stand at something of a watershed for the Union: Either it is reformed to become as it is intended to be - a Union of nations - or it will fail. We've been saying it for a long time now but I have an inkling that others may slowly be coming around to the same conclusion.