To flag or not to flag – that is suddenly the dilemma for every England football fan.
The 2026 World Cup is the first international football tournament since the inception last summer of the contentious Raise the Colours movement, a tacky ad hoc campaign to affix the cross of St George to lamp posts and bridges across the country.
The anti-immigration protest continues to have a visible – many would say disfiguring – impact on villages and city suburbs alike; stirring the hearts of some, but frightening others. Some councils have banned the flags as “an act of intimidation and division”. One of the movement’s founders has recently been charged with murder, following a fight in a pub.
Awkwardly, now is the very moment in the global football calendar when many of us want to back the national team by displaying the national flag from our balconies and windows. It has become a tradition – notably, in places such as the Kirby estate in south London – which is already smothered in St George’s crosses to signal support for Thomas Tuchel’s boys, maintaining a ritual that began at the 2012 Euros.
But in this febrile atmosphere of anti-migrant riots in cities across Britain, how can you tell a fan from a flagger?
