They really are serious about flags

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Another week bring us another hare-brained scheme to protect the union. This week’s is all about flags, or, more specifically about enforcing the display of one flag and subordinating all others to it. Apparently, the government has briefed the Mail on Sunday that enhancing the visibility of the union flag would help mitigate against the break-up of the UK, so they are planning to issue new guidance that the flag must be shown on all government buildings all year round. And, so as not to offend the Welsh or the Scots, they propose to allow the Dragon and the Saltire to be flown from the same flagpoles in a subordinate position below the union flag.

The words which immediately spring to mind are those of the tennis player, John McEnroe, but apparently they are indeed completely serious. It seems not even to have crossed their minds that giving the Dragon and the Saltire an obviously inferior status might be more likely to reinforce a sense of resentment and be a reminder of historical subjugation rather than joyful unity, nor that the union flag is often seen (incorrectly, I know, but flags and logic don’t always go together) as a representation of England rather than of the UK. Trying to impose a sense of unity by using a symbol which is increasingly seen as belonging to ‘them’ rather than ‘us’ instead of addressing the substance and the need for change turns their ‘precious union’ into something which manages to look superficial in the extreme.

Still, we should be grateful. It’s good of them to go out of their way, on such a regular basis, to remind us that the single most fundamental problem with the union is the unionists. Their lack of understanding and empathy does more to destroy that which they claim to hold most dear than anything which independentistas are capable of doing.