Flag zealotry doesn’t fix nation’s problems

HOW often have you seen a government minister appear on television with at least one Union flag behind him or her?

Rudyard Kipling, usually seen as the spokesman for the British Empire, wrote a story based on his experiences at the United Services College at Westward Ho, Devon, called The Flag of Their Country.

In it, a “Conservative MP” gives a lecture at the school exhorting the boys, who are the sons of military officers and civil servants, to do their duty.

At the end of his speech he waves the Union flag, expecting “thunderous applause”.

He is greeted by silence, the boys disgusted by his sham patriotism. Among other terms he is described as a “jelly-bellied flag-flapper”.

One is reminded of Boris Johnson as a parachutist waving the flag as he descends.

Surely the flag is abused when it is exploited as a political weapon or used to rabble-rouse. It may be used to distract attention from uncomfortable truths, to take people’s minds off things like the Covid death rate, or cronyism over government contracts, or a failed test-and-trace system, or racism, or increased poverty and inequality, or an erosion of human rights, or a hostile

refugee policy, or cuts to foreign aid, or a careless and selfdestructive Brexit.

Perhaps we should remind ourselves that flag-waving and romanticising the past can be features of regimes like Nazi Germany. It was another great English writer, Samuel Johnson, who said: “Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel”.

MIKE TEMPLE