OBVIOUSLY the UK Government's Union advisers are avid watchers of the BBC's Interior Design Masters, despite it unaccountably being one of the few competition shows which doesn't have Great British in its title. The show pits aspiring interior designers against one another, and in each episode the contestants compete to make over the tired decor of commercial establishments in hope of making them more popular with the public.
In the case of the UK Government, the solution to the increasing unpopularity of the British state is some nice feature wallpaper prominently displaying the Union flag. It's as though they have decided that there is nothing wrong with the structures and power imbalance of the British state that can't be solved by channelling the interior design ethic of an Orange Lodge in Larkhall.
READ MORE: Westminster asks for every UK Government building to fly Union flag every day
This week it was announced that the latest wheeze from the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport is to get Scotland to think again about independence by ordering all government buildings in Scotland to prominently fly the union flag in the belief that this is going to make us all fall in love with the Tories.
They seem to think that there are people in Scotland who are going to say: "Well I was furious that Brexit has lost us our our rights to live and work anywhere in Europe, and I'm livid that Johnson is using the Brexit that Scotland didn't vote for as a excuse to undermine the devolution that Scotland did vote for, but now that I have seen that the police station in Shettleston is flying a Union flag, I've totally changed my mind."
The current bout of British nationalist flag shagging appears to stem from the misbegotten Conservative belief that in Scotland the red white and blue is a sign of unity. What it's really a sign of is just how out of touch Westminster Conservatives are with Scottish culture, sentiments and attitudes. Even before the referendum campaign of 2014 the Union flag was anything but a symbol of unity in Scotland. It was, and for many still is, a symbol of sectarian divisions and exclusion. For many of us, especially in the West of Scotland, Union flags are inextricably linked with the Orange parades and the triumphalism and entitlement of supporters of a particular football club.
Since the referendum of 2014, the Union flag has become inextricably linked to one side in Scotland's constitutional debate. An order from the British Government that not only must the Union flag be flown from the public buildings that we all pay for via our taxes - irrespective of our views on Scotland's constitutional status - but that the Union flag must be flown higher than the Saltire, is not an attempt to build unity but rather an aggressive means of rubbing the noses of independence supporters in the fact that we lost the 2014 referendum. It's nothing more, and nothing less, than a massive and childish yah-boo sucks to you towards Scotland by the Conservatives and the British Government. It is a very literal symbol of the British Government's view that Scotland is subordinate.
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In recent years Scots were regularly infuriated by British politicians and media commentators referring to England when they really meant Britain. Now the Conservatives believe that they can worm their way back into the affections of Scotland by turning that formula on its head and referring to Britain when they really mean England.
So, for example, we are regularly treated to Conservative politicians telling us that Brexit is the will of the British people when it is no such thing. Brexit won a narrow majority in England and Wales, in Scotland it was rejected by a considerably greater margin than independence.
The co-opting of the Union flag as a disguise does not alter these facts: Brexit is a decidedly English nationalist project, which is driven by the resentments of English nationalism, and the Conservatives are now a nakedly English nationalist party which has abandoned traditional Scottish Unionism. Instead, they favour an aggressively hyper-partisan British nationalism, which is nothing more than a thin veneer over a right-wing and xenophobic English nationalism which seeks to destroy the devolution settlement and concentrate all power in the hands of a Conservative Prime Minister.
The Tories can wrap themselves in Union flags as much as they want, but it only makes it easier for Scotland to see who they really are.
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