Once upon a time, in a land called the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, patriotism tended to be quietly confident. There wasn’t much flag-waving, except for royal weddings and special occasions. Traditionally, British people found the American habit of publicly “pledging allegiance to the flag” a bit, well, you know… odd. It suggested a lack of confidence rather than deep-rooted patriotism. For the British, being patriotic was something you were, not something you did, or promised to be. Too much flag-waving brought to mind Samuel Johnson’s famous quip from the eighteenth century, when Britain was rising as a superpower, that patriotism was the “last refuge of a scoundrel”.
Johnson – a true patriot – understood back in the 1770s that those who behaved badly in public life would drape themselves in the flag in the hope of avoiding punishment, but they were still “scoundrels”. In 2025 we live in very different times. Patriotic flag-draping is all the rage. Nigel Farage, the leader of the most popular party in Britain according to some opinion polls, is often photographed with the British flag as a political fashion accessory. Though he somehow avoided the new session of the British parliament (his day job) to travel to Washington and whinge about all that he believes is wrong with the UK, even ludicrously comparing Britain to North Korea. Not everyone in the Congressional committee was impressed. One Congressman called Farage a “Putin-loving free speech impostor and Trump sycophant”.
Nevertheless, there is a new and somewhat un-British fashion for aggressive flag-waving that runs concurrently with Farage-style whingeing about our country teetering on the edge of disaster. Flag fetishists have abandoned the quiet patriotism of the past. Instead, they hang the Union Jack or the England flag of St George on lamp posts and railings. Some even vandalise roads, signs and roundabouts with crudely painted St George’s crosses (the Union flag of red, white and blue is presumably too much of an artistic challenge.) In one area of Greater London friends report they haven’t seen so many flags since the 1993 May Day parade in Moscow.
Of course, in wartime flags have always been used to send a message about who we are – as well as who we are not. Today, English or British flags appear abundantly in demonstrations, including at the Bell Hotel in Epping where some migrants are housed. Television footage shows demonstrators drinking patriotic beer while shouting patriotic abuse at the hotel, with England flags trailing like giant toilet paper from their patriotic backsides.
On 26 July the Guardian reported a correlation between people involved in this kind of public disorder and their history of domestic violence, saying that: “Two out of every five people arrested after participating in last summer’s riots had been previously reported to the police for domestic abuse.” This correlates with research findings published in the Belfast Telegraph this summer, that out of 48 people arrested in relation to rioting during a far-right anti-immigrant march on 3 August 2024, 23 had previously been reported to police for domestic abuse. Ironically, as Sonya McMullan from the Women’s Aid Federation Northern Ireland pointed out, the arrested men had been claiming that foreign migrants were responsible for violence against women and girls, “yet those who were creating this disorder themselves had histories of domestic abuse.”
The paradox behind every St George’s flag-on-the-bum protest against migrants is that St George wasn’t English
This correlates with research findings published in the Belfast Telegraph this summer, that out of 48 people arrested in relation to rioting during a far-right anti-immigrant march on 3 August 2024, 23 had previously been reported to police for domestic abuse. Ironically, as Sonya McMullan from the Women’s Aid Federation Northern Ireland pointed out, the arrested men had been claiming that foreign migrants were responsible for violence against women and girls, “yet those who were creating this disorder themselves had histories of domestic abuse.”
We can’t extrapolate too much from these examples, but behind every St George’s flag-on-the-bum, anti-migrant protest there is an obvious paradox: St George wasn’t English. He never set foot in England’s green and pleasant land. He was himself a migrant from Cappadocia, a town in modern Turkey. If St George had made it to England today, he might have been one of the asylum seekers stuck in the Bell Hotel.
Baroness Sayeeda Varsi, a Conservative peer and the first Muslim woman to sit in the British Cabinet, pointed out on social media that St George was “born in Turkey, raised in Palestine, a ‘foreigner’ who never visited our shore and who died for his belief in the One God – a basic tenet of Islam and a fundamental belief of all the Abrahamic faiths.” Varsi added: “St George was canonised by a Catholic born in Tunisia and is the patron saint of (amongst others) Ethiopia and Catalonia.” Moreover, “St George was a symbol of internationalism and multiculturalism” and we should therefore “celebrate our nation for the amazing diverse melting pot it is – in line with the great tradition of our patron, St George.”
It’s worth noting that St George did not slay a dragon either, as dragons don’t exist outside the realm of fantasy. And speaking of fantasies, amid all the flag worship perhaps spare a thought for those politicians who have helped create their own imaginary dragons. One is the former Reform MP, Rupert Lowe, now an independent representing Great Yarmouth. Lowe, in one of his many complaints about modern Britain on social media, posted an alert citing “Dinghies coming into Great Yarmouth RIGHT NOW”. Rather than the implied migrant invasion of Norfolk, the “dinghies” turned out to be rowers raising money for charity.
Even more embarrassing was the Conservative MP Chris Philp, who appeared on BBC Radio Four to decry the existence of the Bell Hotel as a place to house asylum seekers. The presenter Nick Robinson had to remind Mr Philp that the person who opened up the use of the Bell Hotel for asylum seekers was the former Conservative government immigration minister: Chris Philp.
Maybe real patriotism means not turning a problem into a crisis, not scaring people and not pretending that the United Kingdom, for all its faults, bears any resemblance to North Korea. I’ll wave the flag for that.
Gavin Esler is a broadcaster and author, most recently of “Britain Is Better Than This”
