Take devolution. Like humans everywhere, the Englishman is patriotic. He rallies to his country’s flag. He is distressed to see it at half mast. He is overcome with feeling when it flutters to the sound of his national anthem. It chokes his breath to see it draped over the coffin of a hero or heroine. As Stanley Baldwin, a former British prime minister, put it: “These things strike down into the very depths of our nature ... our innermost being.”
But for the Englishman today, which flag is supposed to touch his heart? The Englishman is the only man on the planet who is asked to salute two flags. When he encourages his football heroes in the World Cup, he rallies to the Cross of Saint George. But when he cheers his athletes at the Olympic Games he hails the Union flag.
The Englishman loves his Union flag. He fears that his United Kingdom might be cut up into bite-size pieces. But, on the other hand, why should the Welsh and the Scots not have more say on their own affairs? That is only fair. Result? One country. Two flags. No other society on earth inflicts such schizophrenia on its citizens.
Wrong, wrong, wrong.
I wouldn’t call it "schizophrenia"; there are plenty other societies in the world which are secure enough in their own identity to be able to cope with two flags. Unionists in the rest of the UK, citizens in most of the European Union do very well with coping with two flags.
But on the other hand, all Englishmen consider Europe the scene of their finest hour. As every English schoolboy knows, one beautiful May morning in 1945, the King of England drove in his carriage from Buckingham Palace to visit Winston Churchill, the prime minister, in Downing Street to congratulate him on his great victory over Germany. Now the English find that the Germans, of all people, count for more in Europe than they do – recent treaties giving more voting weight to Germany than to England.
Wrong, wrong, wrong.
It wasn’t only "England" which defeated fascism in Europe, George VI wasn’t the King only of "England" and "England" has never had any voting rights whatsoever within the European Union.
So, on the one hand, the Englishman is distressed not to be the natural leader of Europe. But on the other hand, why should 100m Germans not have more votes than 60m Englishmen?
60 million "Englishmen", are you really, really sure about that figure?.
Why on earth has such a respected organ as the FT let this man loose on a subject where he’s quite clearly out of his depth, are there no such things as proof-readers on our national papers anymore?
My own fault really, as soon as I saw him mentioning "Freud" in connection with national identity, I should quickly turned over the page and checked how my Northern Rock shares were doing.
4 comments:
While I'd agree with your comments about the second two posts (Howmany times have we heard the UK=England crap) but on the first one you're stretchng it a bit to caompare the English Flag/UK Flag "schizophrenia" to national flag/EU flag.
I doubt anyone but the MEP's themselves feel any patriotism looking at the EU Flag!
This muppet has a knighthood? I think I've just been convinced that the honours system is broken beyond repair.
Re: the EU flag
I get the impression some European countries are a bit more proud of it than we are tbh hen. Just a feeling though.
I doubt anyone but the MEP's themselves feel any patriotism looking at the EU Flag!
I don't know if "patriotism" is the right word, but you'd be surprised at how much affection (as opposed to the general UK attitude of resigned acceptance) there is towards the EU on the European mainland. Plenty of places you'll see only the EU flag flying.
What about the Germans themselves? They have their own individual state flags and the national one. A bit like us in the United Kingdom, you might say - only they're federal, obviously.
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