RECESSIONAL: How flying the flag became a symbol of revolt.

Hot on the heels of the pink ladies’ protests outside migrant hotels, Operation Raise the Colours is the latest organic, decidedly patriotic, social-media-driven initiative whose success can be measured in the outsized, outraged, utterly predictable reaction it is receiving. While councils continue to remove the flags, on health-and-safety and property-maintenance grounds, identitarian rent-a-gob Kehinde Andrews was invited on to Good Morning Britain yesterday to insist that the Saint George’s Cross is racist and this campaign is a faux-patriotic stunt by the fash. Presumably, Dr Shola was busy.

The sudden, nationwide explosion of Operation Raise the Colours is basically all the proof you need that this isn’t being driven by the far right – a pathetic fringe in British political life that has long struggled to fill a minibus. Apparently beginning in Birmingham, the campaign has since spread to Swindon, Bradford, Newcastle, Norwich and London. Like the migrant-hotel protests, it seems to be decentralised, leaderless, rallied on Facebook and group chats.

It’s a fascinating, bottom-up campaign against a now undeniable, galling double standard – that in ‘multicultural’ Britain all identities are to be celebrated except for Englishness and Britishness. Tellingly, England and Union flags began emerging in Northfield in south Brum around the same time that the Library of Birmingham was lit up in green and white for Pakistan’s independence day. While Birmingham City Council was quick to take down the England flags – insisting these fluttering pieces of polyester, zip-tied 10-feet-high on to lampposts, posed an intolerable risk to public safety – a leaked email has revealed local officials were so scared to remove the ubiquitous Palestine flags that have emerged in the city since the Israel-Hamas war began that council workers were given extra security.

If only someone had predicted at the end of the 19th century that England was about to face a systematic “recessional,” with dire and lasting consequences to the West at large. (Lest we forget.)