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Iain Duncan Smith blasts councils for favouring 'protest flags' over British flags
Aug 18, 2025
Former Conservative leader Sir Iain Duncan Smith has launched a scathing criticism of local councils for taking down British flags whilst permitting Palestinian banners to stay in place, claiming they are "embarrassed to be British".Speaking to GB News, the veteran Tory MP highlighted what he sees as inconsistent enforcement of flag regulations across councils, allowing "protest flags" over patriotic ones.FULL STORY HERE.
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0:00
Well, a Second Council has vowed to remove English or British flags
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that have been attached to lampposts by patriotism campaigners. Well, Tower Hamlets in East London said it would take down
0:09
the St George's flags as soon as possible. Well, let's bring in Tory leader, former Tory leader
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I wish he was a Tory leader, and MP for Chingford and Woodford Green, Sir Ian Duncan-Smith
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Ian, good morning. Thanks so much for joining us. What do you think about this flag row
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Are we making a lot out of nothing or is it significant? Well, it's significant in one regard
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if, of course, these councils are prepared to leave other flags up
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such as the pro-Palestinian flags and not do anything about that. And then suddenly when somebody wants to put up a, well, essentially a British flag
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really part of the Union Jack to celebrate their sense of Britishness
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then they want to take that down. And it does seem to me a bizarre and peculiar situation
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We've seen it, as I say, in Birmingham, where they couldn't find anybody to empty the bins, but have managed to find a load of people to go and take the flags down
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and you couldn't make this up, really, if you tried. The fact is too many of the councils seem to be embarrassed by the idea of being British or even being English and the reality there is that that doesn represent then the majority of the British population
1:13
So I simply say, you know, people should get permission to put flags up, but that would account for every flag
1:19
But at the same time, putting them up like that doesn't mean that you take one down you dislike
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and the other one which you're quite happy with and leave it up. It has to be a policy, and these people are making it up as they go along
1:28
Yeah, it seems to me, Ian, that we're going to get to a stage where it's going to be local people fighting the council on a weekly basis
1:35
I've seen some of the comments on social media. These people are putting these flags up by saying, I will just buy more and I will just keep putting them up
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and even though the council take them down, I will put more up again. How do politicians effectively stop this from happening
1:47
Do they have to embrace the idea of having British flags on high street? Maybe they need to come up with a policy of, I don't know
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we're going to put some up on our local high street or something. What can they do, really, to please people who want to see flags on their high street
1:59
as a result of this ongoing spout of disagreement? Well, I think, like everything else, there needs to be a rule for everybody
2:06
So if you are a council that does not believe in putting flags up
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except at special occasions you should make that clear In which case then people should apply for permission and put them up They shouldn discriminate against different national flags You know you can say the Palestinian flag which for a state that doesn exist somehow is OK because of the ramifications of that
2:28
And putting up the English Cross of St. George is wrong. I mean, the reality is it looks to me more that they're aggravated by the idea of it being a Cross of St. George, which is, you know, many people on the left absolutely hate
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but at the same time happy to go with something which is a protest flag, which has nothing to do with the UK
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So I simply say if you have a rule, it has to be applied equally to all
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and not just to those you rather like and those you dislike. Ian, I wonder why you think that patriotism, particularly English patriotism
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is seen by some as such an ugly thing in this country
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If you go to somewhere like France, which has similar levels of immigration to us
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similar disagreements perhaps about national priorities, You see tricolores everywhere, every government building, lots of just ordinary houses
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They're very proud of the tricolore. Why have we not got that same culture here
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I think one of the biggest mistakes we made was to allow communities to develop separately to develop a separate identity to not inculcate a concept of being British in France
3:30
It was just over there quite recently. They're proud to be French, and that is a great thing
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But in the UK, what we've done, and this has been reported by a number of different commissions, that we've allowed, therefore, communities, people that have come from abroad, etc., now settled in the UK
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to carry on developing their own communities and not to have that sense of link to their country where they now live
3:54
And I think that's a sad problem. And it needs, therefore, in schools to be taught
3:58
that there is an enormous amount to be proud of the UK's history
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I think it was, I can't remember who it was, it said once, you only have to ask what would the world look like
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if the UK hadn't existed. Freedom, the concept of justice, the nature of common law
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the rights of the individual, all of these things, habeas corpus, all things that the UK has given to the world, which are inherent here
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So much to be proud of, this remarkable country, that I just wish others would learn it much
4:25
more sufficiently in schools and understand that they happen to have drawn the first in
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the lottery of life by being here in the UK in the first place
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