Fools & Traitors

Ben Wildsmith

I was delighted to learn this week that you can buy full-sized Union flags for 45p from China, as long as you order enough of them. I figure that 5000 units should be enough to make good on my pledge to burn one every time Andrew RT Davies mentions ‘our flag’ in reference to them on social media.

Should he eventually move on to another imbecilically divisive topic, they are cheap enough to use as liners for the cat’s litter tray. It’s a win-win.

As the right-wing of UK politics has been consumed by flaggery, it’s intriguing to speculate on how this is supposed to fit into upcoming elections here in Wales.

This is silly-season stuff. No real politics can be done in August as our representatives are wrenched away from subsidised bars and compelled to spend time with their families. So, it’s a perfect time for playing at culture wars and agitating the fickle masses – basically stuff you can do on your phone from a villa in Tuscany.

Chancers

A year out from the Senedd elections, Reform UK, the remaining Tories, and a growing cast of chancers who posit even further to the right, are not thinking about Welsh voters. Forgetting that the first real electoral test they will face is here, they have gone hog wild indulging a spasm of English nationalism that has seen the Union flag used interchangeably with the flag of St George.

The latter is significantly easier to daub, particularly by artists with underdeveloped thumbs, so has found its way onto street furniture and sunburned foreheads across Ingerland.

Robert Jenrick, whose political style owes much to the bloke who invented Cillit Bang, had himself pictured tying a flag to a lamp post. Such politicians have a long association with lamp posts, to be fair, Benito Mussolini foremost amongst them

I would be surprised if any of these golf club bullshitters are aware that Cymru isn’t represented on any of the rags they have been dishonouring.

Symbolism

With a by election upcoming in Caerphilly, however, their recent enthusiasm for symbolism that explicitly excludes Welsh voters should provide a rich source of memes for opponents. Reform UK, remember, plans to campaign in Wales without a Welsh party leader. The idea here is that Nigel Farage will seek to represent the party during the campaign, before abandoning it to whichever candidates are elected to the Senedd.

It could scarcely be clearer that the governance of Wales is of no interest to Farage at all. He will be here to raise profile and create headlines for his party. If he can’t bring himself to visit his own constituency in sunny Clacton, he’s hardly going to be concerning himself with the complexities of public transport models in north Powys.

This should be an open goal for Plaid Cymru. Labour’s messaging since Keir Starmer became leader has also veered into Last Night at the Proms excess, with union flags being employed to fill a perceived void in substantive patriotism. As that symbol is wrapped around Lucy Connelly, ‘Tommy Robinson’, hotel protests, and the amoral posturing of GB News, rejection of it will find an enthusiastic reception amongst people who are sick to the back teeth of dogwhistling manipulation and outright bigotry in our public affairs.

Cultural paucity

Our Senedd election, and its precursor in Caerphilly, are opportunities to define our political culture away from all that. Reform UK plan on capturing our politics for flags that don’t represent us, with a leader who neither lives here nor intends to participate in our governance.

Politics in England reflect the cultural paucity of a nation so hollowed-out by predatory capitalism that yelping for identity has consumed it.  People supporting the exploiters of that here should be condemned for what they are: fools and traitors.