How to Wear a Poppy Respectfully

 When I was a child I remember how nearly every adult wore a poppy in the days leading up to remembrance Sunday. Now, as an adult, I look around and see that it is far more common for someone to not be wearing a poppy than wearing a poppy. Is this some kind of dramatic collapse in respect for our troops? Is this the woke brigade going too far? No, it is not. Rather, when I was a child you could buy a poppy from nearly every till point in every high street shop in the week leading up to Remembrance Sunday. Now, I scarcely see them for sale at all. Simply, poppies are much harder to get hold of.

Which then begs the question of where on Earth did Scott Benton MP (CON, Blackpool South) get the monstrosity that he proudly placed on the front of his bicycle? After posting a photograph on twitter of the oversized plastic poppy, many twitter users were quick to point out that such a gaudy display was surely in bad taste, even if his motivation had originally been to help raise money for the Royal British Legion. This alone would perhaps not be newsworthy. Ridiculous displays featuring the poppy, done by those who wish to posture for popularity through the veneer of claiming to have respect for our armed forces, have been all the rage among the right this year. And while Mr. Benton was definitely far from the worst offender here, his response to a twitter user who said “A poppy bike what is wrong with this country hahahaha” certainly meant that he was the one that ended up grabbing the headlines for it. Scott Benton replied to this twitter user with “Unpatriotic lefties who poke fun at the poppy appeal would be top of my list of what’s wrong with this country.” If it was not clear that Benton might have had motives other than respecting the troops, responding with this kind of political charge to being informed that he was doing so in bad taste perhaps did make it clear. However, maybe there is an explanation for Mr. Benton’s unhinged behaviour - after all a cursory glance at his twitter feed shows that he does not live in the real world. He frequently shares pro-Trump propaganda while his colleages have long since distanced themselves from the former President, and he even more frequently shares articles from the online far-right blog Guido Fawkes, which is again so inflammatory and outrageous that most of the rest of Boris Johnson’s sycophants will not touch it with a barge pole.

Benton’s display, one which a cynic might say was to deliberately provoke a reaction that could be spun into a culture war, is part of a wider trend of the government attempting to politicise universal symbols of this country. The aim, of course, is to frame their opposition as people who do not love this country because they do not wish to be associated with symbols of this country. We have seen it with the Union Jack several months ago, and more recently with portraits of Her Majesty the Queen, which was perhaps even worse than the poppy since she is a real living person who, while I have not had the opportunity to ask her myself, would probably not wish to be dragged into the stupid games the government plays on twitter to try to distract from their lack of policies. This strategy is very high risk - if the government ends up appearing to own symbols such as the Union Jack, then plummets in popularity due to, for example, a string of massive corruption scandals tied to the Jockey Club, then the people of this country might naturally seek to distance themselves from those symbols. And thus, alleged “patriots” will have trashed a great national symbol.

Will you vote for people who are willing to trash our flag like this for personal gain?