The decline of the UK flag signals the end of the Union is nigh

Gorbachev will be buried in Moscow’s Novodevichy Cemetery next to his wife ­Raisa, who pre-deceased him in 1999. He will not be honoured by a state funeral, a clue to the divided reputation he leaves ­behind in his native Russia.

Most commentators went for the global importance of glasnost and perestroika, the concepts which precipitated the collapse of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). According to simplified history, it was Gorbachev that restructured the old Communist system enabling the collapse of the Berlin Wall and bringing the Cold War to an end.

Gorbachev’s death has been remembered largely in the context of the collapse of a Union, as if the newly independent ­nations like Georgia, Ukraine and the Baltic republics of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania had no history of resistance to speak of.

There is an old terracing joke that ­Gorbachev’s era was unkind to ­Scottish football, enabling numerous new ­independent nations to join Uefa, all of them capable of beating us. It was ­Gorbachev not Bertie Vogts that put ­Scotland to the sword.

Ironically, Gorbachev’s death ­coincided with the news of the declining health of the British Monarch, Queen Elizabeth, whose “periodic problems with ­mobility” mean she will remain in residence at ­Balmoral, rather than return to London to officially endorse the changing of the Tory guard at 10 Downing Street.

This plodding Conservative ­keadership saga has always had the whiff of ­Crossroads about it, a soap opera with creaking backdrops that only the most dedicated fan can be bothered with. The winner will meet the Queen in Scotland rather than Buckingham Palace.

As Liz Truss and more tentatively ­Rishi Sunak, discuss how they might make it to Balmoral and back in a day, it feels as if something of Old Britain is passing: a monarch, a political democracy, and a sense of state occasion too.

A once grand moment in political stagecraft will now unfold next to powder-pink eiderdown somewhere in Aberdeenshire. Even Nicholas Witchell must be reflecting on lost greatness?

As we look back at the disintegration of one union – the Soviet empire – I relish the prospect of our media being as open about another, the gradual disintegration of the Union that holds Scotland captive not only to a monarchy but to a seemingly endless future of Conservative Party rule.

The politics of fin de siècle, whether it’s the end of regimes, of eras or of empires is infinitely fascinating, and in many ­cases, happens in part because the centre is weakened by its own failings and in part because the periphery can no longer ­tolerate distant rule.

The flag of St George

In 1989, as Moscow stuttered, pro-independence demonstrators gathered in ­Tbilisi to mark Georgian Independence Day for the first time since 1922.

Curiously, it was a cherry-red ­variation of the flag of St George, which the ­protesters carried to the celebrations, the very flag that has gradually displaced the ­Union flag at sports events in England.

For all the unbridled enthusiasm that surrounded the success of England’s women’s team winning Euro 2022, the gender debates, and to a lesser extent the family values, were both obfuscated by the nationalist question: the flag of St George, which dominated every stadium, all but erased the Union flag from sight.

Keen media watchers will have noticed that this form of English nationalism was universally welcomed, even “lionised” and the words that are often dumped on modern nationalism like “dark’ and ­“sinister” were conspicuously absent.

Although flags are often mocked by those that believe patriotism and national identity are embarrassing legacies, flags matter, in both their ascendancy and in their decline.

Flags are not simply a signifier of ­nationhood; they are often the most ­tangible sign of change too.

The Union flag's decline

The decline of the Union flag is a case in point. Although it still clings on at ­officially sanctioned events, in set-piece Tory iconography and in the lumpen bars and supporters’ clubs of explicitly loyalist football clubs, the decline since the war has been spectacular.

Even last week when the Tory Leadership hopefuls met at Wembley Arena, Union flags adorned the stairways on to the stage, the fabric followed the treads as if they had been cut by serrated pinking-shears rendering the once triumphant flag no more than a summer dress pattern

One key landmark in the contemporary decline of the Union flag was the publication in 1987 of There Ain’t No Black In the Union Jack, Paul Gilroy’s academic critique of Britain and the barriers it had put up to immigrants, especially those children of Caribbean immigrants who felt they had no place within a decaying British nationalism scarred by racism.

It was Gilroy’s book and the street ­entrepreneurship of London’s market traders that concocted a new union ­identity from the colours of the Jamaican national flag.

If we are looking for a precise date when the Union flag reached its absolute nadir, then it was August 1, 2012, a day when Great Britain claimed its first gold of the London Olympics. Helen Glover and Heather Stanning produced a ­stunning row to win the women’s pairs but alas their moment in the spotlight was hijacked by a man wearing a hard hat dangling five metres above Victoria Park in east London.

Boris Johnson, then the Mayor of ­London, was persuaded to try out a ­newly installed zip-line, which was part of the London-wide Olympic celebrations but had been malfunctioning over several days.

It was the sort of stunt from which any sane person and any sensible ­politician would have ran a mile from. Instead, Johnson intoxicated with a cocktail of populism and narcissism climbed a tower, and allowed himself to be strapped into an undignified harness with ­supporting straps that cradled his testicles like a leather nappy.

To add status to the stunt he was ­handed a small plastic Union flag in each hand and set off across the park.

Fortunately for the future of Scotland, a local photographer caught this moment of utter impropriety as the zip-wire failed and Johnson looked down on the meagre crowd desperately hoping that the old ­fallacy that all publicity is good publicity, was at least marginally true.

An onlooker described Johnson’s ­indecorous journey in the most derisory of terms. “He was hanging about a third of the way from the end, like a damp ­towel slung over a washing line on a soggy day,” she said.

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The pathetically cheap Union flags ­intended to be triumphant vainly ­fluttered in the breeze wind, sadly connoting an ­inglorious end of union. Supporters of Scottish independence had been handed a promotional gift, a visual meme that they could share promiscuously on ­social media until the curtain finally comes down on the panto.

The idea that Johnson could overcome this humiliation and still become Prime Minister tells you all you need to know about the basket-case that is English electoral politics. So bewitched by the Brexit project and a nationalism that had been fomented to despise Europe, they were willing to put their faith in a clown.

Johnson’s flying circus should have brought his career to a shuddering end, but as we now know to our loss, he had many more disgraces yet to enact.