Pole dunce: the Pakistan flag, the wrong way round, outside the Town Hall yesterday
Jason Perry’s attempts to pander to the borough’s various communities back-fired yesterday, when Croydon’s part-time Mayor presided over a ceremony in which he and an assorted clutch of dignitaries and hangers-on hoisted the Pakistan flag outside the Town Hall – but upside down.
The Pakistan flag was, in any case, only up the Town Hall flag pole for no more than a few hours (Sunday is independence day in Pakistan, which became a nation state on August 15, 1947), before it was removed to be replaced by the rainbow colours of the LGBTQ+ community.
It seems most likely that the irony of this civic flag swap – replacing the emblem of a state which criminalises homosexuality with a flag celebrating gay communities’ hard-won freedoms – will have been completely lost on Perry.
Star right: the correct way to fly the Pakistan flag
But that act alone might yet be interpreted as a deliberate insult to Croydon’s conservative Muslim community.
The vacuous lunchtime ceremony did underline the tokenism and lack of sincerity of the gesture politics being played by the flag-waving Tory Mayor.
Replacement: the LGBT+ flag in place at Croydon Town Hall yesterday evening
As any self-respecting vexillologist, or nine-year-old cub scout, could tell you (but apparently not Jason Perry), the flag which has served Pakistan for 75 years is green and white, with a crescent moon and star.
Importantly, the star should be above the moon, and not as Croydon Council presented it yesterday.
Perhaps though, as Perry reaches his first 100 days in office, this latest diplomatic gaffe was symbolic that things at the Town Hall are getting a bit difficult for the new Mayor?
Historically, from the age when flags were pretty much the only means of communication for sailing ships, flying a flag upside down was used as a distress signal.
Might the upside-down Pakistan flag be Perry’s way of showing that he is already all at sea?
Flagging up the error: how the council propaganda unit publicised the diplomatic gaffe. Mayor Perry is second from the right
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