The Mail and Sun's false flag operation

Has the Labour government really classified the Union flag and Cross of St George as “tools of hate”, as both the Daily Mail and Sun claimed this weekend?

Both papers informed their readers that a leaked draft of the government’s new social cohesion strategy had slapped the tag on the national flags and hauled in Reform’s deputy leader to get performatively angry about it.

‘Flying a Union Jack flag is branded a ‘tool of hate’ in Government’s leaked ‘social cohesion’ strategy’ ran the Mail’s headline, while the Sun ran with ‘Fury as flying Union flag on lampposts is branded ‘a tool of hate’ in ‘divisive’ leaked ‘cohesion’ review’. Both the Mail’s Robert Folker and Sun’s Martina Bet used their extensive contact books to get a quote from Richard Tice.

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The Mail’s report, which referred to “patriotic campaigners” and “patriotic activists” festooning British streets with the flags last summer, quoted Tice as saying: “Absurdly, this says our national flag is a tool of hate used to intimidate. The whole paper is a divisive nonsense that should be consigned to the bin.”

Two papers which are divisive nonsense that should be consigned to the bin are, of course, the Mail and Sun. The leaked report, rather than dubbing the flags “tools of hate”, actually says that the “extreme right has tried to turn symbols of pride into tools of hate”. Furthermore, the draft was a version which was never going to be published, and the words are not in the final version officially published today.

Unfortunately, tens of thousands of people viewed a post on X promoting the stories by Reform mayoral candidate for Hampshire Chris Parry, who wrote that “the @UKLabour regime has classified our national flag as a ‘tool of hate’” and that “@UKLabour hates Britain”. Parry is the man who last year made headlines by demanding non-Christians eat bacon for a month.