Ukraine Shows Us What True Patriotism Is...

...while England displays a sad, pantomime imitation.

This weekend, Ukrainians celebrated their Independence Day, rallying around their national flag as a symbol of togetherness in the face of an all-too-real existential threat to their country. Meanwhile, England's pantomime patriots were flying their flag with an air of menace that undermines the very values it is intended to symbolise, driven by disingenuous claims by the far-right that asylum seekers represent an equivalent existential threat to our own national security. The claim is as obscene as it is ridiculous.

As air raid sirens wailed over Independence Day celebrations in Kyiv yesterday, you could see what real patriotism actually looks like. Not the sanitised, stage-managed version that many nations indulge in, but the raw, uncompromising kind that actually means something. Ukrainian flags weren't draped over lamp posts for Instagram moments - they were wrapped around coffins and clutched by internal refugees who have fled burning cities. That kind of patriotism carries weight and dignity.

Compare that to what's happening now in English towns, where St George's Cross flags have sprouted like weeds after rain.

This isn't the healthy, spontaneous nationalism we’ve seen in the past, uniting communities around the England football team, for example, when they have made it to the late stages of a major tournament. This is patriotism as grievance, orchestrated by a far-right cabal who've discovered that nothing deflects from their lack of substance like a flag-draped accusation aimed at the most vulnerable in our society.

The choreography is depressingly familiar. Legitimate concerns - usually over housing or pubic services stretched too thin or allegations of a crime that police are already investigating - arise within a community. Instead of taking the responsible step of addressing the root causes of these problems, so-called political leaders reach for the oldest trick in the populist playbook: wrapping legitimate concerns in nationalist rhetoric and pointing a finger at the nearest outsiders. Suddenly, patriotism becomes about who doesn't belong rather than about the things we all proudly share.

It's a perversion of everything patriotism should represent. Real love of country isn't exclusive - it's expansive. It allows us all to say "this is our shared home, we are all a part of it and we are all proud of it”. It doesn’t allow a small sub-set to say, “you don’t look like us…you're not welcome here." The difference matters more than we seem to realise.

Northern Ireland’s history offers a cautionary tale. There, flags and painted kerbstones served as threatening territorial markers, not proud symbols of confident identities. Communities spent decades discovering that once patriotism turns tribal, it stops building and starts destroying. And that the downward spiral is difficult to control, never mind reverse. Some communities still haven't fully recovered from those years of literal destruction. Is that really the road England wants to go down?

The tragedy is that English patriotism once knew better - and not too long ago. Remember the 2018 World Cup, when British Asian fans finally felt comfortable wrapping themselves in St George's Cross flags at pubs across the country? That wasn't cultural surrender - it was cultural expansion. Under Gareth Southgate's enlightened sporting leadership, they were claiming their rightful place in the national story, making Englishness bigger and more generous. For a brief moment, the St George’s Cross flag represented invitation rather than exclusion.

But that inclusive patriotism is being overshadowed now by a meaner version, driven by the likes of Farage, Robinson, Goodwin, Anderson, Jenrick, Braverman and more…people who see a lucrative return on societal division. Today's flag-wavers want to shrink the boundaries of belonging, not extend them. They're turning love of country into hatred of neighbours, as if national identity were some finite resource that gets diluted by sharing. (Spoiler: It isn’t.)

When heartfelt patriotism becomes pantomime performance, we lose the benefit of its power. Real national pride doesn't need managing - it emerges naturally from shared achievement and common purpose. It grows from the quiet satisfaction people take in institutions that work, communities that care, and a country confident enough to welcome strangers.

That confident patriotism built modern Britain. It's what turned a rain-soaked little island into a global force. People from all walks of life bringing their individual talents to the national effort of building something great together. Now we're abandoning that legacy for a cheap imitation - patriotism as brand loyalty…all noise and no substance.

Ukraine shows us the difference. Their positive patriotism unifies their people in the face of a genuine national threat. Our pantomime version - pitched as a defence against an imaginary one - divides ours. Theirs builds democracy; ours destroys it. Theirs strengthens communities; ours will weaken them for generations to come, as happened in Northern Ireland. And all because a bunch of right-wing opportunists have discovered that division sells.

The choice facing Britain isn't complicated. We can reclaim patriotism as a constructive, uniting force, or watch it become just another weapon in our self-inflicted culture war. Those in any doubt about the relative value of these options should refer to Farage’s last big project: Brexit.

Ukrainians are dying to defend what we're casually destroying. If that doesn't shame us into doing better, nothing will.

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