UK flag if Scotland leaves

[Sheilbh]

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/shortcuts/poll/2014/feb/26/poll-british-flag-scotland-independent

The union jack: how can a redesign do it justice?
If Scottish independence comes about, the union jack will need a new look. But how can anything compare with this pop-iconic flag?
Nothing better reveals the depth of the psychological change to modern Britain (sorry – the British and Scottish Isles) if Scotland secedes than the bizarre and shocking thought that we would have to change one of the world's most pop-iconic flags.

These designs have been released by the Flag Institute to start a debate on how this heraldic totem of national identity might be reinvented. A Welsh dragon and an English cross? A starburst postmodern union jack? A funky tricolour? None of these designs look very reassuring when you set them alongside the pride and sentiment the union jack symbolises.


Flag Institute's designs. Photograph: Flag Institute

Britain's flag as it looks now, with its merging of English and Scottish crosses, was adopted in 1801 in time for the Battles of Trafalgar and Waterloo that gave Britain unquestioned world overlordship for the next 100 years. Yet this date is misleading, as is the myth that the name "union jack" only applies at sea – the Flag Institute says it is correct on sea and land. The union jack evolved from a design commissioned by James VI of Scotland when he became James I of England and many paintings from the 18th century show our flag looking recognisably similar to that of today.

The good old flag flies big and bold in about 1700 in a painting by Willem van der Velde of British and Dutch ships pounding each other with all guns blasting. It is kept proudly aloft in John Singleton Copley's painting The Death of Major Peirson, 6 January 1781, as heroic redcoats defend Jersey from the pesky French.

Perhaps more awkwardly for the current debate, William Hogarth's painting The March to Finchley, 1749, depicts the flag being carried by soldiers on their way to defend London from Bonnie Prince Charlie.

The flag of Britain in its earlier incarnation, as well as the design adopted in 1801, has therefore been part of every famous battle and victory parade that marked the rise of an archipelago off the coast of Europe to global power – and also our descent in the 20th century. Does that make it a hated imperial symbol to be gladly got rid of? People just don't seem to see it that way. In modern times the union jack has clad the Spice Girls and been recreated as a giant Olympic spin painting by Damien Hirst. It's really quite popular. While Jasper Johns did his best to make the American flag into pop art, the truth is that British pop culture is uniquely bound up with our breezy banner.

And why not? In the time the union jack was their symbol, the British did more than build, rule and give up an empire. They were not the world's worst baddies, and in some ways not baddies at all. They became a democracy without the bloodshed it cost in most other countries. They established a welfare state. They stole rock and pop from America and sold it back and ... Oh, it's all getting a bit David Bowie. So look, how about making the dragon a bit bigger? You need to keep the Welsh happy now.

Why are they all awful?

Edit: Also the first two comments:

toriphobe
26 February 2014 3:52pm

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The colours of the Third Reich as in the first example would seem appropriate to increasingly fascist England
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meltwaterfalls toriphobe
26 February 2014 3:56pm

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Glad this discussion hasn't descended to Hyperbole.

[MadImmortalMan]

I heard France lacks a Queen, after all.

[garbon]

One reason is they are all pixilated and appear to have been thrown together in paint. After all, it'd be busy but the royal coat of arms on a flag wouldn't look awful.

[Josquius]

It would stay the same.
It originally represented the union but now it just means Britain. Just as the crosses on it once meant Christianity but now carry none of those connotations.
A rebranding would be a mistake.

[Tonitrus]

Just keep Scotland.

[Queequeg]

Scottish nationalism is incredibly fucking retarded.  That said, the bottom center one seems best.

[Queequeg]

The 2nd row far-left one would be cool if the Welsh flag was in the top-right quadrant rather than the bottom-left. 

[Monoriu]

Scottish nationalism is incredibly fucking retarded.  That said, the bottom center one seems best.

The bottom centre one looks incredibly close to the Chinese character for "rice".  The existing union jack flag is already known as the "rice character flag" in Chinese circles.  The new design will make the rice thing even more explicit.  Rice is also often used to represent money, wealth.  So that flag gives an impression, to a Chinese at least, of a flag of a triad organisation 

[Queequeg]

   Must have been especially hilarious during the Opium Wars.

[jimmy olsen]

Crush the rebels with Fire and Blood!

[Valmy]

I am just hoping the polls hold and Scotland remains in the Union.  Come on Bonnie Scotland I believe in you.

[Iormlund]

[3, 3] without that hideous shield thingy.

[Queequeg]

From Wikipedia:

"the dismantling of the 300-year-old British state would [be] a traumatic psychological blow for the forces of capitalism and conservatism in Britain, Europe and the USA", and that it would be "almost as potent in its symbolism as the unravelling of the Soviet Union at the start of the 1990s"

[Valmy]

So if Scotland becomes independent we lost the Cold War after all eh?  Those Capitalist bastards will pay for their crimes eh Comrades?

[Queequeg]

These people are delusional.