Flags as symbols of prejudice, not pride – and a distinct air of menace. Welcome to England 2025 | John Harris

The rapid spread of these banners is unsettling – and shows how the hard right is reaching people and places the left cannotIt was a sun-soaked weekday in the West Country, and all I could think about was the flags. Around the sedate Wiltshire town of Devizes, they fluttered from trees and upstairs windows, with crude versions sprayed across roundabouts. In my adopted home town in Somerset, meanwhile, local desperadoes had vandalised a pedestrian crossing close to a school, which had sparked an online row, partly because they had jettisoned their paint cans down a nearby alley. “Apart from the paint being dumped, I applaud them,” said one Facebook post. There was talk of more crosses appearing at the car park near the GP surgery – and, in among scenes I usually associate with calm and quiet, a sudden and unsettling sense of mischief and menace.Such is the impact of Operation Raise the Colours, a campaign which seems to have begun in the suburbs of Birmingham. Its origins apparently lie in a few flags being cleared from lamp-posts as the city council tried to install LED lighting. In the hands of online provocateurs, that was enough to confirm stories about woke local bureaucrats denying people their national identity. That narrative has quickly ballooned, with sometimes grimly comical consequences: the dependably restrained Reform UK MP Lee Anderson says that any elected official who supports removing British or English flags “should be removed from office for betraying the very country they serve”, while his party’s council leader in Northamptonshire insists that for health and safety reasons, “we may need to take them down in the best interests of our residents”.John Harris is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...

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