The St George’s flag was once considered a “safe”, more inclusive, alternative to the union jack after the latter was co-opted by the National Front in the Seventies. It became cool in the Nineties thanks to David Baddiel and Frank Skinner’s football song, though while that era is back in fashion, the red and white flag is too – for all the wrong reasons.
It featured heavily in last summer’s anti-asylum hotel protests, far-right poster boy Tommy Robinson’s overflowing Unite the Kingdom march, and Paul Golding’s arrest-heavy Britain First rallies, and the recent spate of “flagging” has to put it lightly – been a PR nightmare.
