Only in Britain could a self-proclaimed patriot and Member of Parliament – and minister, if you please – decry the national flags hanging from the lampposts of her constituency as “divisive”.
That is what Sarah Sackman, Labour MP for Finchley and Golders Green and Minister of State for Courts and Legal Services, had to say in a recent article for the Barnet Post, no less. She declared that, according to messages from her constituents (I would love to know how many) the flags affixed to several lampposts, particularly in Golders Green and Temple Fortune, “do not feel like a symbol of national pride” but are instead “a source of division and intimidation”. Apparently, to many, they are “unsettling, intimidating and othering”.
To no one’s surprise, she could not resist the temptation to lambast invisible racist, far-right phantoms, so sadly characteristic of a modern Left that has betrayed its own roots and become, to be frank, boring and exhausted.
This reaction to the abundance of flags stems from a grave misunderstanding of what is happening across our country, and has nothing to do with the Left’s once-great patriotic traditions which produced the likes of Attlee and Foot. In a country that has never seemed more atomised, in which a unifying identity appears ever more distant, a prevailing culture ever more elusive, the national flag on our lampposts is precisely what we need.
The remedy to Starmer’s “island of strangers” diagnosis, about the only thing he got right, before predictably taking it back, lies not only in renewed policies to promote social cohesion and combat extremism. It also lies in treating these flags, and the impulse behind their prevalence across British high streets, as a force for good. The collective spirit of the Left ought to reclaim and own them.
Its opponents, no doubt, raise the issue of Britain being diverse and open. But the national flag is not an obstacle to a multicultural society. It is the precondition for one. A country composed of people of different ethnicities, religions and cultural backgrounds requires something that stands above those differences, and binds its citizens together. Without such a shared national identity, multiculturalism does not produce harmonious diversity, but an atomised society of competing groups that are increasingly fractious, suspicious and divided. Is that not large sections of modern Britain?
When I wrote The Melted Pot, observing the decline of national identity across Western Europe and our chilling delusions about multiculturalism, I quoted two great figures who understood the indispensable role of national identity: the late, great scholar Roger Scruton and his student, the late, great Chief Rabbi Lord Sacks.
Scruton argued that what makes the nation such a compelling force is that it sidelines “loyalties of family, tribe and faith”, placing before citizens, as the focus of their patriotic feeling, “not a person or a religion but a place”. Such a place is defined by “the history, culture and law through which we, the people, have claimed it as our own”.
That is, we can say, the triumph of national identity: it allows us to create unity without demanding uniformity. It gives people of radically different backgrounds a common civic home and a loyalty larger than family, tribe, ethnicity or faith. Far from suppressing diversity, it creates the conditions under which diversity can exist peacefully. So rather than having “Unity in Diversity,” as the EU motto goes, with a patriotism that goes beyond empty words, we actually have diversity in our unity.
Lord Sacks, meanwhile, spoke of contemporary society as resembling a “hotel” where “you pay for services rendered and in return you get a room, you get room service – beyond that, you are free to do whatever you like so long as you don’t disturb the other guests”.
That may sound like a wonderfully convenient arrangement, but it encourages nothing in the way of loyalty, responsibility or sacrifice. As he reasoned: “A hotel is somewhere where you don’t belong. It isn’t a home. It’s a convenience. And therefore, when society becomes a hotel, as it has become in the past 50 years, you get no sense of national identity, of belonging, of common history, of common good, of moral consensus, of social solidarity – and that is where we are now.”
These men were ahead of their time. By a very long way.
Instead of misinterpreting the St George’s Cross and Union Jack as hostile to multicultural and multi-ethnic societies, the Left ought to embrace them as symbols of the only political community capable of guaranteeing those societies’ peaceful existence. They represent the shared nation that gives people belonging and meaning within a particular land, governed by common laws and protected by recognised borders and boundaries. Indeed, if they fear the presence of the "far-right" and their abuse of our flags, then that makes reclaiming the flag not merely preferable, but an urgent responsibility.
Without that national framework, people do not cease to possess identities. They simply make their own little “isms”. This, in part, explains the attraction of extremist and identity politics: everyone must have their own individual label because they no longer can identify with the shared one. The vacuum of identity must be filled. Leave it open, and people will turn to that which does threaten our liberal societies. We can see where that has led us. Politics has become an argument between communities rather than a debate among fellow citizens. The result has not been liberation from nationalism, but something much more sinister: the return of tribalism in a more bitter and dangerous form.
The flag-raising movement is thus, if anything, a truly left-wing cause. This is, I dare say, the most authentically British left-wing movement we have seen in recent years. It is about the collective coming together for a common good because they are fed up with individualism and neoliberalism. We do not want greater separation from our neighbours or higher fences between communities, and we do not want to live in a country that has no regard for itself. We want that precious sense of togetherness.
It is noteworthy that Sackman began with a reference to the World Cup. Despite the disappointment in footballing terms, the country came together in an extraordinary display of mutual kindness, solidarity and good humour. We saw people of every background wearing the colours of St George, and that was something to celebrate, not sneer at.
The World Cup should have taught us that national flags can serve as a common thread between strangers, and is that not what we want, what we most need, today? Would that not move us, at least a little, towards some necessary social healing?
But it is not enough to use national flags as mere props to be flaunted at the pub during World Cup season. We have to make patriotism something culturally and socially meaningful throughout the year, not merely a series of words uttered in a distinctly supercilious manner about loving this country because of its “openness” and “tolerance”, whatever that is supposed to mean in practice.
No: we need to rediscover, rethink, and rejuvenate the place of national pride in our public life.
Multiculturalism in Britain has come under strain not because Britain is multicultural, but because we have increasingly neglected the shared framework within which people of every background must live, participate and assume responsibility for one another. A multicultural society cannot survive indefinitely on tolerance alone: it needs common loyalties, common obligations and a sense of common destiny. Do without it, and you get the crisis of Islamist antisemitism, the resurgence of ethnonationalism, and a society that isn't really a society anymore.
That is what our flag, and all it represents, stands to resolve. That is its magic. The flag does not say that everyone must be the same. It says that, despite our differences, this is our country, our home and our shared responsibility. Nothing could be more needed for our nation, if indeed we can still be called one.
It is time for politicians of both Left and Right to rediscover the power of flags and national feeling on our streets. For it is unity on our streets that will lay the foundations for a cohesive society to be rebuilt. The alternative is not some benign, borderless multicultural paradise. It is a country that becomes ever more atomised, more fractious, more divided and more bitter – and, for that matter, considerably less safe for us Jews. Preventing that is the greatest task of our age.
Harry Saul Markham is the author of The Melted Pot: Diversity, Antisemitism, and the Limits of Tolerance. He is currently ghostwriting a book for a top American sports journalist, exploring extremism among Gen-Z Americans, to be published with HarperCollins US. He is also the founder of a new boutique literary service, https://www.themarkhampartnership.com
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