There’s a protocol to flags, you know. The Union Flag and the St George’s Cross are meant to be flown from sunrise to sunset, then either taken down or lit up properly if left out after dark. They’re supposed to be kept in good nick too, not abandoned until they resemble a crisp packet snagged on a hedge. For a week or two they look terribly proud of themselves, strapped to every lamppost in sight. The Union Flags can even look rather fine. But give it a couple of months and those same flags will be hanging in shreds, greyed by exhaust fumes, flapping miserably in the drizzle. Not one of the self-styled patriots will bother replacing them, because ladders are heavy and nylon costs money. It’s patriotism by cable tie – all noise and no maintenance. Real love of country takes effort: paying taxes, funding services, actually keeping the place in order. Far easier to festoon the streets with tat, then watch it decay into litter while congratulating yourself on “defending Britain.” If bunting could vote, they’d win by a landslide.
And here come the Reform voters, who must share a single brain cell and pass it round just to take a piss. Their arguments look like they were scrawled in crayon on the back of a Wetherspoons menu. By the time the neuron comes back round, the debate’s moved on, so out comes the chant of “common sense” as though saying it enough times makes it true. That’s not discussion, it’s slogan karaoke. Countering them is like shooting rats in a barrel – no sport, just vermin. These are the same people who voted for Brexit, broke the country, and now play the victim.
Then you’ve got the flag-wavers themselves, out on the streets with Chinese-made St George’s crosses and daubing roundabouts red and white. All stirred up by far-right agitators like Tommy Robinson (Stephen Yaxley-Lennon when he’s not playing dress-up as Britain’s last line of defence), Mark Collett, and Andy Saxon, the painter-decorator behind “Operation Raise the Colours” with Britain First fingerprints all over it. Ask them about English history and you’ll get a blank stare. Their patriotism peaks at Sports Direct, yet they’re always barking “do your research” when their own research amounts to copying and pasting whatever bilge their echo chambers have just belched out.
Robinson himself insists he’s not a racist. He’s said it in court, on telly, and he’ll say it again tomorrow. Meanwhile the evidence piles up: Muslims branded “enemy combatants,” refugees accused of “raping their way through” Britain, racial slurs dismissed as “banter.” Not racist, apparently. Just patriotic honesty. But if you act in a racist way, you are a racist. End of. It’s as clear as a man drinking a bottle of whisky every night claiming he’s not an alcoholic. Your actions define you.
And the prejudice doesn’t stop there – it spills straight into the asylum debate. We’re told asylum seekers in hotels are more dangerous than the rest of us. The facts don’t bear it out. Out of more than 32,000 people in hotels, there have been just three convictions for sexual offences. Even if you assume guilt in the one ongoing case, that makes four. Which works out at the same conviction rate as the UK population overall. In other words, asylum seekers are no more likely to offend than anyone else. And here’s the kicker: if this really were about protecting women and children, you’d see protests at airports too, because every holidaymaker carries the same risk. You’d see protests outside schools and churches, which have far worse records for abuse. But you don’t. The outrage is aimed only at asylum seekers, not at actual danger. It’s fear dressed up as fact.
There’s something grimly poetic about it all. Britain’s far right spend their days banging on about halal meat, headscarves and Sharia law – apparently unaware they’re the best marketing department British Islam has ever had. If they had even a passing interest in outcomes, they’d take a leaf out of secular Judaism, which quietly shed the dietary laws and most of Leviticus while keeping the culture, the humour and the guilt.
But subtlety’s not their forte. They can’t resist shouting. So rather than letting young Muslims wander, as most second and third generations do, into agnosticism and Nando’s, they shove them back into the fold. Not with theology, but with paranoia. Nothing galvanises identity like being under siege. You’re not going to quietly ditch the hijab if there’s a bloke with a Union Flag and a bulldog tattoo telling you to “go home” – especially when you’re from Burnley. Instead of secularisation, you get solidarity. Instead of drift, you get defence. Farage and his echo-chamber philosophers mutter about “self-segregation,” blind to the fact they’ve done more to preserve Islamic identity in Britain than any imam ever could. Left alone, people blend. Back them into a corner, and even the lapsed start chanting. You can’t scare people into forgetting who they are. You just remind them – louder than their own parents ever did.
Which brings us back to the cavemen. The Neanderthals were supposed to have shuffled off this mortal coil 40,000 years ago. Yet here they are again, sulking outside hotels with badly spelled placards and a tin of red paint. We’re supposed to be Cro-Magnon now – bigger brains, better tools, a flair for art and music. Those early Homo sapiens carved figurines, painted caves, invented chisels. Their descendants gave us cities, libraries and symphonies. Ours, apparently, give us Dulux vandalism across a traffic island.
It’s not just a lack of imagination, it’s a lack of integration. They howl that asylum seekers won’t integrate while they themselves refuse to. Their world is a tribal sulk – flags, slogans, an endless re-enactment of grievance. Proper culture creates; theirs defaces. And yet, in the irony that always seems lost on them, it’s the asylum seekers who are actually trying to integrate. They’re learning English, working, paying tax, raising kids, building futures. While the self-styled guardians of “our way of life” stand outside Travelodges bellowing at strangers, as if that’s the height of cultural achievement.
But here’s the final twist. The knuckle-draggers aren’t the real winners in this drama – they’re just the chorus. The spoils go to the spivs and hedge-fund men: Jeremy Hosking, Arron Banks, Crispin Odey. They bankrolled Brexit, profited from the chaos, and now bankroll Reform. Farage knows it, which is why he sticks to the same tired buttons – immigration, Brussels, small boats. His followers don’t need policies, just a tune to hum while they wave their imported crosses and paint their roundabouts.
History has seen this pantomime before. Mosley had his Rothermeres and his Daily Mail shouting “Hurrah for the Blackshirts!” from the front page. Today the dynasties are the same, the newspapers the same, the slogans barely updated. The only difference is the frontman – Farage in place of Mosley – and the same working-class banners carried for causes that only tighten the grip of the rich. In the end, the Neanderthals will shuffle back to their caves, but the financiers will already have cashed in. That’s the real patriotism at work here – loyalty not to Britain, but to their offshore accounts.
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