How Keir Starmer swapped taking the knee for waving an England flag

It’s getting like the final scene of The Invasion of the Body-Snatchers. In the last reel of the 1978 version of the movie, we discover that Donald Sutherland - our hero and only hope to save the world - has been turned overnight into an alien in human-form. He’s been body-snatched.

Today, folk seem to be body-snatched with increasing regularity. There’s some perfectly nice centrist-liberal you’ve known for years, then one day they start raging about refugees and Pride marches. Sometimes it’s anti-vaxx lines you’re hit with, or climate denial.

It’s not invaders from outer space who’ve got hold of them, though. It’s the radicalisation machine called social media.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m all for changing your mind on political matters. My views on nuclear weapons, for instance, have changed dramatically over time, shifting from my idealistic CND youth to today’s more pragmatic ‘don’t put down a pistol in a roomful of shotguns’ approach. 

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Another example: where once I was fairly liberal on law and order, I’ve slowly become much more stringent. I now support life sentences for sex offenders.

But these are changes over a lifetime. I’ve thought about issues, mellowed my opinions through life experience (being a crime reporter certainly changes your views on offending), and reached conclusions which brought me in a different direction. 

It’s as bonkers to go from a left to a right position overnight, as it is to refuse to ever rethink your personal ideology. 

Today, though, it’s common to see someone who was a happy-clappy lefty just the other day move to the right of Mussolini with the speed of a mongoose. 

Partly, it’s down to social media pushback, I reckon: they say something daft that gets them shouted at by a bunch of puritanical liberal-lefties who won’t permit any divergence of opinion. That causes them to dig their heels in; they get support from crazy, right-wing culture warriors, and soon they’ve found new friends and a new audience. 

People want to be liked; people need a tribe. The independent thinker is an increasingly rare breed today.

Push-back alone, though, is merely the lesser cause. The sheer welter of extreme rightwing content online - vastly outweighing extreme leftwing content - hasn’t just shifted the Overton Window, it’s chucked a brick through it. 

Like it or not, people are easily persuadable, and when the bulk of the mainstream media and social media is saying ‘hate these people’ then many folk will just start hating ‘these people’.

The flag of St George is displayed outside shops in the English town of Walsall (Image: Getty Images) Which leads us to Keir Starmer. Starmer has most certainly been body-snatched, but is his swap of ideologies for real, or a con? 

There’s a subset of the body-snatched who are simply grifters. They’ve seen what way the wind is blowing - strongly rightward - and they’ve tacked their sails in that direction as there’s money, fame and power to be had. It’s common in the media.

Starmer emerged in his full body-snatched form this week when he engaged in what, I believe, some call an act of brazen ‘flag-shagging’. It’s not the prettiest metaphor but it certainly gets the point across.

He started banging on about how his Downing Street flat is bedecked with St George’s flags. “I always sit in front of the Union Jack,” he said.

The images this brings to mind are truly weird. Does he wear red, white and blue undies? Are we supposed to take this seriously? It’s just odd.

Not to be outdone, the Home Secretary Yvette Cooper boasted about having Union Jack and St George's flags as “bunting and tablecloths”. She has flags … as tablecloths? 

It’s got to the stage where you can’t believe anything this bunch says anymore. Not so long ago, Starmer was taking the knee for Black Lives Matter, now he’s sounds like an applicant for the English Defence League, prancing about ‘raising the colours’ on lampposts and roundabouts across the shires.

This is quite the political journey by anyone’s estimation. I’m not sure how many BLM knee-takers out there wrap themselves in the English flag, but I’m willing to bet the Venn diagram is rather small. 

Many would consider me some ‘woke’ leftie - whatever the hell ‘woke' even means anymore - and I wasn’t running around taking the knee. I’ll fight against racism, sexism and bigotry, but I ain’t getting on my knees for anyone. 

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So for Starmer to go from his super-woke public knee-taking, to his super anti-woke public ‘flag-shagging’ certainly seems strange. 

Let’s set aside the fact that the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom frotting with the flag of England isn’t necessarily a great look given there’s three other home nations to consider. Flag-wrapped patriotism is deeply creepy and usually quite dangerous.

I hate flags - all flags. I support Scottish independence but I loathed those Saltire-draped marches that went on for years. They alienated the folk who needed to be won over, had an anti-English undercurrent, and focused independence on petty nationalism rather than building a better society for everyone, which is why I voted Yes.

Starmer appears to have nowhere left to go but to hide under a flag. His policies have failed, he’s alienated his own electoral base. He’s so unpopular he could be booted out by his party before the next election. Labour’s hopes of retaining power are slim to vanishing.

So, Starmer - like one of those ship-jumping grifters - has decided that dressing up in the clothes of Reform and Nigel Farage is his last forlorn hope. If a flag is all you’ve got, then in truth you’ve got nothing.

A flag is a painted dish-rag, nothing more. It symbolises the most brutish of emotions: lumpen patriotism, the ‘my country right or wrong’ mindset. 

Is this what we want in a Prime Minister? Starmer’s embrace of this street nationalism should be no surprise, though. He laid the ground with his ‘island of strangers’ speech.

The only upside to all this - if there is one, evidently - is that here in Scotland, the next time Yes voters are called ‘flag-waving nationalists’ by their opponents, all we have to do is hold up a picture of the Prime Minister ringed by English flags. 
If anyone is a flag-waving nationalist it’s Starmer, only the nationalism in question is British.

Neil Mackay is the Herald’s Writer-at-Large. He’s a multi-award winning investigative journalist, author of both fiction and non-fiction, and a filmmaker and broadcaster. He specialises in intelligence, security, extremism, crime, social affairs, cultural commentary, and foreign and domestic politics