Commons descends into red and white madness

Health questions on a Tuesday morning, nothing new there. One side says there are too few doctors; the other that there are, if anything, too many. But what is this? “Happy St George’s Day,” says Andrew Stephenson, the health minister. “Happy St George’s Day,” chirps Wes Streeting.

It’s weird. Worse, it’s American. Before you know it, they’ll be saluting the flag and pledging allegiance to the Magna Carta. Keir Starmer isn’t PM yet and he’s already changed us, his campaign to make Labour less loony – by insisting it’s alright to be English – triggering an arms race in patriotism that will end, as everything must, in Penny Mordaunt riding into the chamber dressed as King Richard.

Idly, I flick through Hansard. I’m struggling to find evidence of an MP saying “Happy St George” in the Commons before now (Victoria Atkins just did it again). No one even mentioned what day it was when they last held questions on an April 23 – in 2019 – or at the height of the war in 1941. The subject of that debate was cheese rationing.

Suggestions to fly flags or declare a public holiday were dismissed in 1914 and rather glibly by Clem Attlee in 1951. In 1959, Sir Godfrey Nicholson asked Harold Macmillan if it was time for a celebration of Englishness and SuperMac pledged objectivity on the matter – being Scottish.

“Is he aware,” asked Sir Godfrey, “that poor, oppressed Englishmen would very much appreciate this flying of their symbol ... although they are quite content in the knowledge that they are the dominating power?”

Tory patriotism is arrogant, yes, but also tongue-in-cheek. It’s the Left who take everything too seriously. Up on social media pops a video by Keir, passionlessly explaining that the red cross of St George stands for “pride, celebration, belonging and inclusion”. Not chivalry or God? No, the Left has taken a second look at Englishness and found, to its delight, that it fits entirely with the values they plan to promote after the next election. In the meantime, they’ll spoil the camp fun of patriotism with their earnest embrace.

Yvette Cooper will ask if St George, being Turkish, would have been sent to Rwanda? Angela Rayner will insist that fire-breathing dragons are a “real and growing problem”, that damsels are being kidnapped – “yet the Tories have cut investment in crusades and wizardry down to the bone!” As Emily Thornberry screams “Shame!” with an England flag painted on her face, we might start to miss Jeremy Corbyn’s internationalism.

In 1923, George Lansbury, a future Labour leader, told the Commons that if it must celebrate April 23, could we not also celebrate the workers on May 1? Sir Harry Brittain replied: “Is it not a fact that St George is a more inspiring figure than Herr Karl Marx?”

I left Westminster early to escape the annual St George’s Day punch up between police and patriotic marchers, the latter inciting violence by coming dressed as “openly English”. There were fascists in that crowd of course, it’s the law of averages, but I hope not the two northern ladies, draped in flags, who walked cheerfully up to a mounted copper and said, “Scuse me darlin’, we’re lost!” Aren’t we all?