Fury over shirt emblem leaves sanity flagging
‘‘ Rishi Sunak had to weigh in as Keir Starmer had done so already...
ONE OF MY best friends, Andy, introduced me to the movie Monty Python and the Holy Grail a few years back.
In the comedy classic, there’s a scene where one of the knights, Sir Bedevere, is asked to conduct a witch trial by a group of rabid locals. As he points out the flaws in their claim that she is up to no good, the eye-swivelling locals shout: “Burn her anyway!”
It came to mind last week as the fire and the fury over Flaggate reached fever pitch.
For the uninitiated, Nike revealed what they described as a “playful” take on the flag of St George ahead of England’s game against Brazil last Saturday.
The country responded by losing its mind. Forget the cost of living crisis, our bankrupt local councils, sewage in our waterways, racism, anti-semitism, four million children in poverty and energy prices shooting though roof.
Likewise, police investigating the Tories’ largest donor, Frank Hester, for calling for a Black female MP to be shot – and claiming the sight of her made him hate all Black women. It barely registered on the Richter scale in some sections of the media. Likewise, Foreign Secretary James Cleverly spending £165,561 on a private jet for a short PR visit to Rwanda A multi-tone purple cross? Meltdown. Monty Python and burning the witch came to mind when some utterly bemused but thankfully sane radio presenters pushed back at claims that our national identity had been threatened. It soon flushed out more than a few irate callers who actually had no idea what they were cross about.
One presenter pointed out that the Union Jack had been repurposed for our athletes ahead of a fantastic 2012 Olympics in this country. Loaves of bread with a purple union jack from around the same time popped up. Fans of domestic football across the country revealed a litany of examples where their club colours had been changed, played around with, butchered even. And guess what? They got on with it.
Still, the callers fumed and trotted out phrases they’d read on Twitter or seen on far right TV channels to demonstrate their incandescent rage. Petrified Prime Minister Rishi Sunak chased the bandwagon to weigh in on just how terrible the whole thing was, largely because Sir Keir Starmer had already done so.
Both men waded in because neither wanted to be painted as unpatriotic, particularly in election year. And none of this is to decry the importance of national identity. Far from it. But high horses were saddled up by some public figures who headed for the moral high ground without knowing one end of a football from another.
And on and on we went with the colour of a 2D shape on some fabric on the back of a shirt, that few TV viewers would even notice in the end, sending the country batbits mental.
The real thing to get annoyed about was the price. A ludicrous £124.99, which would probably feed an average family for a week in these troubling times.
Mercifully, the FA stuck to its guns, insisting sanity would outlive one of our more bizarre news cycles and that they would not be withdrawing the shirt.
The Team GB flag for the 2024 Olympics, a colourful array of pinks, blues and purples, will no doubt set the hounds off again in pursuit of likes, retweets online and fake culture war points in the papers and on TV.
Let’s enjoy the calm before the storm while it lasts.