If a council can fly every flag except its own, it has lost the plot, writes conservative thinker Aman Bhogal
When I land at Delhi airport the first sight I see is a massive 100ft high tricolour flying high - it is a sign of a civilisational nation proud of what it is building as the world’s greatest democracy.
Similarly, we see the Americans flying the Stars and Stripes everywhere ubiquitous with great pride. You see the same across India, where huge Indian tricolours soaring high at railway stations, airports, schools, town centres. And a national campaign by the Modi government - “Har Ghar Tiranga” - “A tricolour in every home” encouraged citizens to fly the flag from a billion homes.
And then you arrive back home and land at Heathrow and you are greeted by a grim looking non-descript “welcome” desk with a banner on the wall projecting “multicultural” London. Not a Union flag in sight.
Instead, we have an assortment of Britain-bashing, Briton-hating, self-aggrandising activist busybodies telling us our great Red, White and Blue and the flag of St George is “offensive” and “divisive”.
There comes a point where you have to say enough is enough with this two-tier Britain where we are told: patriotism is a dirty word and cultural nationalism is enough to land you referred to Prevent under “terrorist ideology”.
I and millions more have had enough of the self loathing; enough of the bureaucratic cowardice; enough of the idea that we should tiptoe around our own identity as proudly British and how privileged we are to call England our home.
Because when local councils start treating the England flag, our flag, like a public order risk, something has gone badly wrong in the national psyche.
This isn’t about “community cohesion”. It’s not about “sensitivities”. It’s about a metropolitan liberal elite political class lanyardwallahs that has spent the last three decades of the Blairite orthodoxy trying to manage, dilute, and apologise for British identity: and now can’t quite believe that ordinary people still value it.
Our England flag is not the problem. The people “scared” of it are. Let’s be honest: no other country on Earth behaves like this. The Scots fly the Saltire with pride.The Welsh fly the Dragon with joy. The Northern Irish fly the Ulster banner without a second thought. But in England, we get jumped-up council officers whispering about “context”, “appropriateness”, and “potential offence”.
Offence to whom? Those who do not belong here.Offence to what? To the “sensitivity” of those who want all that our country offers but do not love it as their home.
The only thing the England flag threatens is the worldview of those who think patriotism is something to be rationed.
The two-tier double standard is now beyond parody. Town halls and Sadiq Khan at City Hall will fly almost any flag going, rainbow flags, EU flags, foreign national flags, cause of the week flags, Palestine and Pakistan flags without hesitation.
But the moment someone wants to raise the Cross of St George, suddenly the clipboards come out - risk assessments, impact statements, consultations.
The blob that is the bureaucracy is now in the grips of a Marxist driven ideology - a quiet belief that Englishness-Britishness must be managed, contained, or apologised for. Truth is, flying the England flag is an act of belonging, not division. As a proud British Indian - millions like me - people from all ethnic backgrounds who are proud of our great nation and blessed and privileged to call England our home – proudly fly the Cross of St George and the Union flag.
I have spent the last decade promoting the Cross of St George and the Union flag as “It’s my flag, it’s your flag - it’s OUR flag”.
The people who sneer at the England flag always make the same mistake: they confuse patriotism with extremism.
They think the salt-of-the-earth people flying our own national flags are somehow making a “far-right” political statement. We are not! We are expressing pride, expressing our identity. We are expressing the simple truth - that this is our home. If councils can’t understand that, then the problem isn’t the public. It’s the councils.
The bottom line is that a country that hides its identity loses it.
When our mainstream institutions refuse to embrace our national symbols, they create a toxic quagmire which damages our national tapestry as the greatest nation on the face of this Earth - a multi-racial, multireligious, multi-ethnic pluralist free democracy.
It’s time to normalise our national pride with the great renewal of our civilisational nation. It’s time to celebrate our national flags and put them back where they belong: on public buildings, in public life, and in the public imagination.
The English deserve the same respect as everyone else. This is the heart of the issue - two tier Britain where for too long, English identity has been treated as something awkward - something that must be diluted, softened, or wrapped in disclaimers.
But the English and the England flag are not a problem to be managed. This is our culture, our pride in our civilisational history and heritage. We have every right to fly our own flag without being told it’s “inappropriate”.
If a council can fly every flag except its own, it has lost the plot. This is our flag; this is our history and future. If a council can fly the flag of a foreign nation but not the flag of England, then it is no longer serving the people who pay its wages, and any jumped-up leftwallah who attempts to stop us flying our flags must be shown the door immediately and held to account for anti-national activities.
It’s time to stop apologising for England. The England flag is not a threat, it is not a provocation, it is not a political weapon. It is a symbol of who we are - our history, our culture, our continuity, and our shared belonging.
If councils don’t like that, then the problem isn’t the flag.The problem is that too many of our institutions have forgotten who they work for. We need massive amounts of reform to conserve our civilisational inheritance.
It’s time to fly the England flag with pride - not permission. Be proud, be a patriot - fly the flag!