Flag unites us...and that’s why many on the Left reject it
IF you want to understand in a single image the transformation in the Labour Party since the days of Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership, just have a look at the many pictures of Sir Keir Starmer standing beside the Union Flag.
It’s there whenever he speaks on a Labour platform. It’s there in the campaign literature the party sends out. It’s there, wherever and whenever Labour can associate itself and Sir Keir with the flag.
Yes, there were pictures of Corbyn alongside the Union Flag. But they jarred, not least because he seemed ambivalent to Britain to the point of failing unequivocally to condemn Russia in the Salisbury poisonings episode. Whether one agrees with Starmer’s politics, on the other hand, no one can seriously suggest he is anything other than a patriot who wants the best for our country.
That is a significant change, and it is one of the foundations of the massive poll leads Labour now enjoys.The perception that Corbyn appeared not to be a patriot – to the point of failing to sing the national anthem at a public event – shackled Labour during his time as leader.
BUT while there has been a real and important change in the party’s upper echelons, this change is far from universal. In recent days there have been reports of anger among some Labour MPs and activists over the use of the British flag. According to The Guardian, there has been a “concern it may alienate ethnic minority voters and others”. It reported that Labour MPs “asked why material provided could not be more tailored”.
Few things are more depressingly predictable – and wrongheaded – about the modern Left than its obsession with identity politics, in which we are defined by the group we’re said to belong to, leading to a patronising “stay in your lane” attitude to ethnic minorities.
If they did tailor Labour’s messages to different communities, these MPs would suggest dividing voters into specific and different groups who should be treated as if they are in competition with each other rather than part of society as a whole. It is a prescription for division.
These vital matters feed into how we define British values, citizenship and multiculturalism, including fine-tuning what those values are, what we expect of those who come here and how we integrate them. These factors are of huge significance to our stability and future as a nation.
But before we consider these things we need to make sure we are not starting from premises that have no basis in fact.
It’s notable, for example, that while the Left thinks of itself as being progressive on racial (and sex) equality, it’s been the Tories who have given us our three female prime ministers and our first ethnic minority foreign secretary, home secretary, chancellor and prime minister.
There’s a similar flaw in the way it is simply assumed by many on the Left that the Union Flag – indeed, patriotism – jars with minorities because the flag is used by the far-Right.
The opposite is true. Last year the Left-wing writer Sunder Katwala published a fascinating book, How to Be a Patriot. He showed how there is simply no contradiction between being either a Left-wing patriot or an ethnic-minority patriot. As he wrote: “All studies persistently find ethnic minorities have a stronger British identity than the white British and high levels of pride, too.”
But facts have never stood in the way of ideology and a large part of the Left has come to be obsessed with what it describes as anti-colonialism and critical
race theory. The latter essentially argues that all whites are inherently racist and that it is therefore racist to argue against race being the defining feature of society. Couple that with anti-colonialism – which holds that the West has effectively broken the world through imperial ventures, while ignoring other empires – and you end up with a politics in which the Union Flag is inherently evil.
AND you find local councils fly, for example, the Palestinian flag as an expression of support. (Patriotic feelings are fine… but only for another country.)
George Orwell had it right in his 1941 essay,The Lion and the Unicorn. He said the class system was holding back the war effort and that being a socialist wasn’t contradictory to patriotism but complementary to it.
When King Charles went on his unscheduled walkabout on Easter Day, he wasn’t dividing the nation into different groups, some of whom he represents and some he has no involvement with. He was uniting us – and this, of course, is also what the Union Flag does. Which is why those who hate the idea of a united country reject it.
‘They falsely assume the Union Flag jars with minorities’