Keir Starmer may be planning a ‘patriotic’ rebrand for Labour, but I’m more curious about the government’s approach to the flag
The union jack is always seen as a problem for Labour, isn’t it? Can MPs stand in front of it and look as though they mean it? Fixating on that, we may have missed a tiny detail: that the Conservative party has gone bananas.
No half measures for the Tory bigwigs, no siree: most of them have a full-sized union jack lurking, artfully draped, behind a sofa. Robert Jenrick, the housing secretary, appeared on ITV’s Peston in an office that housed a giant flag, but was otherwise just a grey box, save for an occasional table bedecked with photos that looked as if they had been cut out of a catalogue. Matt Hancock has his behind the sofa and tilts his head towards it meaningfully as he talks, like a swinger trying to nod towards the pampas grass. Grant Shapps’s looks a bit polyester, but your takeaway should be the size, not the quality. See how big it is? That is how much he means it, whatever “it” is.
