Sturgeon’s cheap and cynical insult to the Queen

ScoTLANd is a proud and historic nation. We have our own legal system, our own banknotes, our own national church and our own Premier League.

But we are not a state. Since 1707 we have been part of the United Kingdom – a Union that, contrary to much myth, we entered freely. only three years ago, we voted emphatically to remain in that United Kingdom, whose standard is the Union Flag.

Yet this week, and most covertly, the Scottish Government has all but hauled down the Union Flag.

It can now be flown from public buildings on only one day of the year – Remembrance day, November 11 – and, otherwise, the Saltire will flap year-round.

‘only on exceptional occasions,’ whines the strange new decree for 2018, ‘would a flag other than the Saltire be flown on a day other than a listed day. Any requests to fly flags on exceptional occasions must be cleared in advance with the First Minister through the protocol and honours team.’

We have had, hitherto, 14 other occasions when the red, white and blue has flown – all of them in connection with the crown.

They include the anniversaries of the Queen’s accession, coronation and marriage, her birthday, and also those of the duke of Edinburgh and several other members of her house, including the Princess Royal (but not, oddly, the Earl of Inverness, as Prince Andrew is styled on this side the Tweed).

All are now discarded. The Union Flag will now be permitted to fly but once a year – just as often as, for instance, the commonwealth flag and the European Union standard will fly. Yet incredibly it will not fly as often as the Rainbow flag, the banner in use the world over for gay rights.

By decree of the First Minister, this flag must be hoisted on such unforgettable occasions as the ‘Start of LGBT History Month’, ‘International day Against Homophobia, Biphobia and Transphobia’ and Edinburgh Pride.

Beyond this, the Royal Banner – that yellow job with the red Lion Rampant – is left to flutter over St Andrew’s House, the headquarters of the Scottish Government, and on occasion other Scottish Government premises if the First Minister is present.

And that’s it. We may still be in the United Kingdom, and we may have voted to remain in the Union – but its national flag is now of no more account than the commonwealth and the European Union, which the UK has voted to leave.

It seems all this – plus the quiet insult to the Queen and her kin – is being carried out by the fiat of Nicola Sturgeon, and without so much as a debate in the Scottish parliament.

Flags are but symbolic, yet symbols matter. The swastika standard of the Third Reich has, for a long lifetime, been synonymous with evil. The white flag is a universally recognised signal of surrender. The Americans take the stars and stripes so seriously that many campaign for a constitutional amendment to make its burning a serious criminal offence.

THE Union Flag we know today was adopted only in 1801, on the abolition of the old Irish Parliament in dublin – which is why its description by nastier Nationalists as the ‘Butcher’s Apron’ is not just offensive, but ignorant: cumberland fought culloden under an older, different standard.

And it has had its ups and downs. We might not be inclined to credit Tony Blair and New Labour for very much, but that administration deserves praise for reclaiming the British flag, not just from the yobbos of the racist far-Right but from English football supporters and the like who had long monopolised it as their own.

In recent years, through what has been a golden age for British sport, we now associate it with the proud achievements of such knights as chris Hoy, Andy Murray and Steve Redgrave. It is still quartered, even now, in the national flags of Australia and New Zealand. It remains, for our senior citizens, the standard by which we once and twice faced down the forces of darkness in terrible world wars.

And the world over, whatever nonsense young folk pick up in schools, the United Kingdom flag is still generally associated with honour and with decency, modesty and sportsmanship and, of course, a cup of tea.

It all comes down to identity, the main reason why recent referenda (on Scottish independence and the European Union) became matters of so much emotion, because they were not just about given political arrangements but, in a fundamental sense, who we think we are.

And the mass of Scots, even today, feel – no doubt in varying mixture and degree – both Scottish and British.

If we are less given to street parties and bunting than our English friends on House of Windsor high days, the Queen – at least – is still highly respected north of the Border, and spends a good chunk of

her year here. Our pockets jingle with change from the Royal Mint. Thousands of young Scots serve happily in Her Majesty’s forces.

And many of us avidly follow the complicated (albeit improbable) fortunes of characters in English soap operas.

To Nationalist exasperation – to the point where Yes Scotland had explicitly to address it in 2014 propaganda – many Scots resist independence as they genuinely believe they would lose Coronation Street.

The successive terrorist attacks down south last year appalled Scots as much as anyone else and, intriguingly, while every lad I know avidly follows one Scottish football side or another, all of them seem, besides, to cheer for some English club, too.

On Jeremy Corbyn’s recent jaunt to the Western Isles, he lingered for an age in the local tweed mill because he was so tickled to meet a youth who, like him, is an ardent supporter of Arsenal – at least until they play Rangers.

The more thoughtful Nationalists – sadly few on the ground these days – have long been aware of this dualism in the Scottish psyche and tried intelligently to address it. Indeed, in the case of Andrew Wilson – once a close lieutenant of Alex Salmond and, during the first Scottish parliament, the SNP’s finance spokesman – it cost him his political career.

In 1999 he argued forcefully that people could feel both Scottish and British, annoying many of his colleagues. He then clumsily described the Union Flag as ‘offensive’ – annoying everyone else – and then, in 2002, urged us all to root for England in the World Cup.

Consequently in 2003, SNP activists duly avenged themselves, dumping Mr Wilson so far down the Central Scotland regional list that he lost his seat.

Now the decision to all but ban the Union Flag from Scottish Government buildings is as cynical as it is outrageous.

It is lazy red meat for the most blinkered Nationalist activists – typical overreach by a woman who is not actually the head of government of a sovereign state.

It is puerile discourtesy to our Head of State, an insult to the Scots – the majority of Scots – who support the Union and identify with a wider United Kingdom, and it mocks the memory of those who laid down their lives so that, amid much else, you do not find yourself reading this in German.

Some of the First Minister’s choices in government have been astute. Many have been mistaken. This one is just plain cheap.