With this eyesore flag flying on every street, London feels like a city under occupation.
London feels like a city under occupation. Cycling through town yesterday I saw a foreign flag fluttering from every major building. There it was on top of Drummonds on Charing Cross Road, the poshest bank in the land. It flew from the tallest building in Trafalgar Square, too. That structure, peering down on poor Nelson, had five flags in total: four Union flags and, in the middle of them, taking pride of place, seeming to assert its political primacy over the flapping Union Jacks, this new flag, this strange flag. I parked at Foyles to browse the new books section and there it was again, a vast banner draped over the entrance, reminding all who entered that there was a new power in town. Then there was Regent Street. Honestly, I have never seen anything like it. The entire boulevard was festooned with the new standard. Scores of them hung above the street, from building to building, in perfect militaristic formation, as far as the eye could see. It felt chilling.
It was, of course, the Pride flag. Or the Progress Pride flag, as it is now known, following the addition of new strips of colour to represent queer black and indingeous people, trans people and intersex people. Yes, the 0.02 per cent of the population who have indeterminate genitals now have a flag. Quite why I must be reminded with every corner I take that a few unfortunate babies are born each year with malformed testes or ovaries is a mystery to me. The Pride flag has become an eyesore. Not only because of the addition of yet more garish shades and now a triangle and a circle too – it’s a wonder I didn’t come off my bike gawping at this kaleidoscopic monstrosity – but also because it is so clearly an ideological flag. It might not be the flag of a conquering foreign army, but it is the flag of a conquering elite. It’s the flag of a new identitarian establishment that is determined to let the little people know whose ideas rule in the 21st century.
I’m old enough to remember when the Pride flag was just a gay symbol that you’d see at gay events and gay establishments. Gay pubs had it in their windows. Marching homosexuals would wrap themselves in it as they hollered: ‘We’re here, we’re queer, get used to it!’ Aside from a few blue-rinse traditionalists, no one really had a problem with the rainbow stuff back then. Tolerance of homosexuality has sky-rocketed in the UK in recent decades. A 2019 Pew poll found that 86 per cent of Brits think homosexuality should be accepted by society. A few years ago the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association gave the UK the highest score of any country in Europe for achievements in gay equality. This is great. Britain is a very safe, nice place for homosexuals to live. And that is in large part down to tireless campaigners who marched behind the Pride flag. Nice one! Now, though, the Pride flag means something else entirely.
