A distinction has been made for some time in politically disgruntled circles, both here and abroad, between the nation and the state, the former identified with the beloved place, culture, people and history, the latter with the maddening mess of bureaucrats, officials, policy and mismanagement.
It’s an observation that grumblers – among whose ranks I’d estimate many Gript readers are included – will identify some truth in. As long as the workings of the state are perceived to be doing damage to the fabric of the nation, it’s a gulf that will only continue to grow, delegitimising the state among no small number of people and provoking protest and subversive behaviour on stated behalf of the nation.
One of the starkest demonstrations of this distinction taking root and developing in the consciousness of a people that I’ve seen thus far is currently playing out in the UK, where ‘Operation Raise the Colours’ is well underway across vast swathes of England, Scotland and Wales, with Northern Ireland continuing to operate instead according to its own, particular logic.
In recent days and weeks, lamp posts, walls, windows, facades, roofs and more have been festooned with the Union Jack, or more commonly, with St George’s flags in England, and to a lesser extent, the Saltire in Scotland and the Red Dragon in Wales. Crosswalks, roundabouts, potholes and other blank spaces haven’t been spared, either, and have had big red crosses painted on at a rate that local councils are clearly struggling to keep up with.
It’s a phenomenon sweeping across British society, and English in particular, with ordinary people taking part in droves for a variety of reasons, including but not limited to in protest at the perceived mismanagement of the country, particularly in relation to immigration and justice, and out of a desire to express what has long been considered a forbidden love of patria.
While ordinary Brits have been doing the flag-raising legwork, politicians across the spectrum are figuring out how to position themselves in reaction to it. Some, like the Conservative Party’s more social media-savvy members – such as Robert Jenrick – have decided to go the whole hog and join in, taking pictures of themselves up on a ladder and hanging a flag or admiring one put there by someone else.
Others, like Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham, have taken a more sceptical view, telling BBC Radio Manchester that the flags “are contentious…especially the flag of St George”.
“I don’t think you need to start going out painting your community, you can obviously display a flag if that’s your choice but I don’t know, I do wonder about the times we’re living in,” he said.
“It’s like people are seeking confrontation.”
While a great many people around the world, and no less here, would agree with the characterisation of the Union Jack and St George’s flags as “contentious,” in the domestic context, it naturally raises interesting questions about why, in England, the national flags of other nations’, namely Ukraine and Palestine, have been allowed to fly unfettered for years now. It is a scenario that feeds back into that dynamic with which this article began, the idea – as one X user memorably put it – that the state is as a “great hideous toad squatting over” the nation, suffocating the life out of it.
The aggressively repressive approach the British state is taking to its own citizens – locking up the (recently freed) Lucy Connolly for an outraged tweet sent in the wake of the Southport stabbings, running over protestors outside of migrant hotels, charging people for praying silently in the streets near abortion clinics – is nothing but fuel to a disassociative fire, of which simply the latest manifestation is the flag fever gripping the nation.
“Disassociative” because many of those hanging or appreciating the flags are asking who or what the governing elite are loyal to if national flags have primarily come to be seen as provocative or rebellious. They argue that the flag shouldn’t be carted out simply for notable events like the Olympics or the death of a monarch, but rather should be leaned into as a source of shared identity and of common, national life – the two things most perceived as under threat in the present age of discontent and disillusionment.
No, no amount of elite resistance, of fearmongering about the ‘far-right’, or appeals to this or that international cause is likely to put this particular genie back in the bottle. The ‘Ulsterisation’ of British politics, characterised by breakdown into ethnic blocs to which politicians try to appeal, is well underway.