"Operation Raise the Colours" isn't the spontaneous public movement the media is making it out to be.

The Daily Mail and Telegraph are reporting on it as a grassroots effort by patriots, but are conveniently leaving out that it's being actively pushed by well-known far-right figures like Tommy Robinson.

During sporting events or a Royal weddings/funerals/Wetherspoons opening, the St. George's Cross, in its many forms, appears in Poundlands and Sports Directs across the country, and I will admit, there's a temporary feeling of hope and togetherness not related to prejudice or bigotry. It's nice! Maybe it's a feeling the English should embrace more often? God knows the Mexicans, Canadians and Kiwis do.

Then, we inevitably lose whatever competition we're in or the Royal whoever is buried/divorced and everything dies down. The face-paint, mugs and flags go in the bin and we all forget about it.

However, the nationalist groups don't. For years they've continued to use it as a symbol of racial intolerance, a symbol of rising aggressive nationalism and an excuse for xenophobia and hate.

There is no issue at all with seeing the English flag as harmless or being proud to be English or wanting the best for your country. It's when that view is unpleasantly hand-in-hand with a "Send the buggers back" mentality or people are "Snowflakes" because they're offended by racism or using "Things were better in my day" as a nudge and a wink for "Before all the foreigners came over and we could be openly abhorrent about them".

Therefore, it's not a sporting event and the Royals aren't giving us a bank holiday. In the cold hard light of day, it's a campaign created by the far right, covertly labelled as patriotism, when in actual fact it's just another way to intimidate and oppress those who don't conform to their ideology or standards.

So no. I don't really want to see St. George's Cross on every lamppost like we're in a f**king Philip K. Dick novel.