“A Flagon of National Pride Please, Barman”

Six weeks ago, every car, truck and motorbike was flying the cross of Saint George. A disarmingly large proportion of houses, flats and shop fronts were adorned with the same emblem. Folk of all ages, sex and creed ventured to the local corner shop in the red and white of England while pubs heaved with revellers draped in England flags and sporting those ridiculous fluffy top hats (you can get one in any colour so long as it’s red and white). The nation acted as one gestalt entity and cared not for the opinions of those looking in from the outside. “We are England” the realm proudly stated, in between sips of Pimm’s No. 1.

It was wonderful until England limped out of the World Cup, owing to one part rubbish coach and one part cheating Portuguese bastards – a malignant mélange if ever there was. The world rejoiced, but England returned to its dull, grey norm. The flags went down quicker than Cristiano Ronaldo having a dust up with a mild summer breeze and the patriotic attire was consigned to the abyssal depths of the nation’s wardrobes yet again. Or at least for two years until the European Championships begin in earnest, although where “Earnest” is I don’t know.

For six weeks it felt like we were all in the fray together – a band of brothers fighting off the menacing enemy at the white cliffs of Dover and eliminating the subversive threat of sceptics – tennis fans – within. We overcame it, if not for a short while, but the streets inevitably became a drab affair once again and the normal humdrum of everyday life had well and truly infiltrated back into the mindset of the fifty or so million inhabitants of England. The togetherness that eleven English lions and one incompetent Swede had engendered was now extinct and we could recommence with clubbing each other with the vigour of men catching up for lost time.

The expression of national patriotism had subdued the urge to rape and pillage amongst the ne’er-do-wells and turned them into an almost humanoid form. When national pride takes hold on such a grand scale nothing else matters. Thugs suddenly help people to their feet when they stumble, hooligans will help an old age pensioner across the road (so long as it’s on the way to the pub) and ruffians become the standard bearer that leads the charge of a nation.

But Brand England, for all its positives, coerces the obtuse aspect of society from under its stone. The British National Party (BNP) – a collection of racist simpletons and Nazi sympathisers – jump on the bandwagon of such an emotional tidal wave and claim it a jingoistic victory for “real” Englanders against the nasty immigrants. The fact that you’ve got more chance of winning the national lottery (six from forty-nine, you do the maths) than finding an Englishman who can’t trace his ancestry back to the Vikings, Saxons or the Celts seemingly escapes them.

It’s not just left to the vile scrotum folds in the BNP to spout moronic nonsense. In fact it also comes from the polar opposite – the politically correct brigade; the forty-something Women’s Institute member, the tree-shagging hippy student living on lentils – you know the sort.

They claim that the national flag is an affront to multiculturalism, an inciter to racial hatred against non-whites. Can the reader imagine this happening in the United States? No, nor can I. But here in England we meekly take the flag down amid sincere apologies. My suggestion is that if somebody doesn’t like the flag of England, up sticks to Libya – they’ll be begging for the beauty of red and white after three months of swearing allegiance to Gadaffi’s green sick bucket of an ensign.

And that’s what annoys me: we allow ourselves to be subjugated by the killjoys with their preposterous paradigm of what constitutes a perfect society. A society devoid of expression as a collective, a society of androids dreaming of electric sheep, a society so inoffensive such that everybody agrees with each other and discursive discussion and debate is obsolete.

I want my country to be doused in national pride. I want my country to look to the flag of Saint George and feel their chest expand with the passion that only a country can garner. I’ll take my love for the flag and fly it in the face of the racists and the politically correct, for if we curtail our patriotism, the imbecilic minority win.