Keir Starmer just slapped English people in the face – we can spot a fake a mile away

If there is one certainty in this period of unprecedented​ doubt, hesitation, incertitude, suspicion, and scepticism under Labour, it is this: We are not a “united, resilient and secure”​ nation. Read between the lines of Sir Keir Starmer’s half-hearted message on St George’s Day, and he has taken aim at the very people he and this Government should be championing: the working classes.

But Labour loathes them. It despises those who hoist the St George’s cross all year round, not just on April 23, because in their view, they embody plastic patriotism. Actually, flying the flag with pride has come to represent something much more – it is now an act of unity among those who believe they have been sold out by a Government that puts others first.

And they have a point, don’t they?

Labour champions the rights of men who pretend they are women at the expense of those toiling on the frontline of the NHS, it provides bed and board to migrants when veterans who have fought and served this country are forced to sleep rough, and it sneers at those who want to celebrate this country’s rich history by airbrushing the past.

Our pitiful prime minister’s St George’s Day message is plainly pathetic – not least because in his 357-word address, he fails to mention England.

Starmer and Labour see St George’s Flags as tools of division, with the left sneering at those who fly them, accusing patriots of hijacking them to spread hate.

But if he wants to know why they flutter with pride from Carlisle to Cornwall, it is that millions no longer recognise the country of Shakespeare and Churchill, of Morris dancing, red telephone boxes, and seaside holidays, of rolling green hills, quaint villages, country lanes, deadpan humour, self-deprecation, irony, and politeness.

Under Starmer’s socialist utopia, the boot of Labour has sought to crush dignity and individuality – the very essence of Englishness.

It’s no wonder people ​are fighting back.

Sir Keir said the patriotism he believes in is not “performative, not divisive, but fair, respectful and proud”.

He added: “That means when people try to hijack our flag to spread hate, we should call it out for what it is: plastic patriotism that corrodes the very bonds that tie us together.

“It also means backing the mainstream majority of people in this country: the decent, tolerant people who want to get on and build a stronger country, and it draws a hard line against extremism in all its forms.

“I know what the flag of St George stands for. It stands for decency over division. Unity over hate. And a country where patriotism is measured by what you put in, not what hate you stir up.

“Those are the values I will always fight for.

“And that is the job of this government: to strengthen our communities, to confront those who seek to divide us, and to make sure Britain remains a country that is united, resilient and secure.”

This, remember, from a man who happily appointed national security risk Peter Mandelson as our man in Washington.

For decades, the phrase “we are all equal under one flag” embodied the powerful ideal of national unity, an expression of shared identity and the idea of equal rights under a country’s laws.

It was interpreted as a call for all citizens, regardless of their background, to unite under the umbrella of a single nation and its laws.

Not under Labour, which slavishly worships at the altar of political correctness and sees the St George’s cross as divisive rather than cohesive.

Sir Keir said that only through “supporting integration can Britain defeat the poison of populism”.

Try telling that to people living in Crowborough who have seen hundreds of undocumented illegal migrant men bussed into their community in the dead of night against their express wishes.

Is this the patriotism he believes in?

The Prime Minister is a man as stiff as a board and wooden as a log, hypocritical, fake, phoney, and disingenuous, but then he represents a party that has long despised allegiance, devotion, loyalty, and nationalism.

Remember party grandee Dame Emily Thornberry?

In 2014, the then Shadow Attorney General was forced to resign after a viciously snobby tweet during the Rochester and Strood by-election in which she posted a picture showing a terraced house with three St George’s cross flags and a white van parked outside.

It was a captioned image from #Rochester.

And that just about says it all.

A party that should be banging the drum for the English working classes instead slings bare-faced insults at them.

And still they scratch their heads and wonder why they are tanking in the polls and are about to receive a lesson at the ballot box from Nigel Farage and Reform UK, both of whom unashamedly put patriotism first.