Keir Starmer’s patriotism is electioneering but he’s right about one thing – we must fly the flag on St George’s Day
SO how are you celebrating St George’s Day today?
Nice bit of fish and chips, washed down with a pint of mild and a toast to His Maj?
Maybe you’re more of a cream tea sort, with St George’s Cross bunting strung out front, raising a cup of English breakfast to our much-missed Queen?
Ah, decisions, decisions . . .
More likely you’ll be doing absolutely bugger all and — had you not read this — will go through the day without the foggiest that April 23 is St George’s Day.
And you could be forgiven for doing so (I forgive you!).
After all, turn on the radio, the TV or scroll through social media for less than 60 seconds and you’d be convinced England is the worst place on Earth.
So why bother celebrating somewhere evidently so horrendous?
Let’s just dial down St George’s Day.
Sssh! Nothing to see here.
Anti-Anglophile narrative
You see, it’s fashionable to hate Britain — and especially England — if you’re the kind of folk who think they know best: snowflake students, woke leftie charlatans, smug politicians, ungrateful celebrities, humourless bureaucrats, thick toffs and anyone at the BBC.
To them, England is not a unique land of side-splitting humour, world-conquering music, award-winning telly, top-flight sport, peerless actors, eccentric celebrities, charming boozers, decent ale, proper chips, good-natured queues, breathtaking scenery, bracing seafronts, fascinating royals, fair play . . . and a must-read red- top newspaper.
They don’t cherish these things — and more — that make you and I proud to be English.
The anti-Anglophile narrative has no room to accommodate inconvenient facts.
No, they’d rather see it as a godforsaken country with a shameful past we must never be allowed to forget and must always apologise for.
A pitiful land crammed full of racists, bigots and flag-waving knuckleheads who’ll kick you in the f***in’ ’ead for staring at their pint.
A small-minded nation that hates even “foreigners” on our own doorstep — the Scots, the Welsh, the Irish. Do some of these people exist? Yes. Are they in any way the majority? No.
But the anti-Anglophile narrative has no room to accommodate inconvenient facts.
Leading lights among the detractors were revealed yesterday — and, surprise surprise, they’re Labour voters.
One in eight of them, doubtless representing the Corbynite lunatic fringe, thinks the English flag is “racist and divisive and should not be displayed”.
The exact same mindset that recently infiltrated the Football Association, who now infamously ditched the St George’s Cross from the new national football kit, splattering their faces with egg in the process.
This one in eight would no doubt rather see the flag of Palestine flying, or one of the endlessly confusing LGBT+ standards.
More worrying, only 56 per cent of those Labour voters polled think the St George’s Cross is “a symbol to represent England and no one should be offended by it”. (That’s compared to 91 per cent of Tory voters agreeing.)
Wow.
But what a difference a day makes.
On Sunday Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer was gushing in a Conservative-backing newspaper about his “pride and gratitude” at being English.
“Labour is the patriotic party now,” he confidently declared, as he tucked into a plate of jellied eels at an East End pie shop with his bulldog sat loyally by his side (probably).
So patriotic is he, he proclaimed, he had written to all the party’s election candidates urging them to mark St George’s Day “with enthusiasm” and to “fly the flag”.
You know, dreadful people like that MP, Emily Thornberry, who nearly choked on her own vomit after seeing an England flag on a house in Rochester.
Starmer — in full man-of-the-people chameleon mode right now and who probably can’t even remember what breakfast cereal he’s supposed to like — just isn’t having this idea that Labour harbours folk who hate England.
You know, dreadful people like that MP, Emily Thornberry, who nearly choked on her own vomit after seeing an England flag on a house in Rochester — how vulgar! — and snootily tweeted about it.
She resigned as a member of the Shadow Cabinet after her haughty gaffe but guess what . . . she’s seen the light and is back in the Shadow Cabinet.
Hurrah! Crack open the English sparkling wine! Fly the flag, Thorners!
Now, Sir Keir’s words may be the latest cynical spiel from a man who knows he’s about to become PM yet still hasn’t a clue about the real lives of the people he will be governing.
We should fly the flag
But he is right about something.
We should be proud to be English.
We should be grateful to live in a country of “stoic wit and quiet decency”.
We should fly the flag.
Sometimes the incessant howl of outrage about what we have supposedly done wrong as a nation is so deafening it is impossible to think about all that we have unequivocally done right.
Let’s use today to take stock of all that is good about England, how far we have come together as a peaceful, hard-working, welcoming and diverse country.
It is no wonder that a petition to make St George’s Day a holiday — driven by the residents of a famously St George’s flag-bedecked housing estate in London — has already gained 75,000 signatures.
But holiday or no holiday, we can all ensure that today is a day to reflect on how much this great land means to us.
Let’s not get too bogged down in exactly who the 3rd Century Christian martyr St George actually was (whisper it softly . . . he wasn’t even English!).
Instead let’s use today to take stock of all that is good about England, how far we have come together as a peaceful, hard-working, welcoming and diverse country.
A day to connect with friends and family, to be grateful for all that we have.
Which just leaves us one dilemma.
Haddock or plaice?