Calls for a boycott of Nike are growing over a “woke” rainbow redesign of the England flag on the Euro 2024 football kit, with Rishi Sunak wading in to the row saying the company “shouldn’t mess” with the flag. The Mail has more.
Rishi Sunak today slammed Nike and the Football Association for changing the colours of the St. George’s Cross on the new England shirt, declaring: “When it comes to our national flags, we shouldn’t mess with them.”
The Prime Minister, a Southampton fan, said the English flag is already “perfect” after legends Peter Shilton and David Seaman decried the “woke” design and appalling £125 price tag.
As England fans today vowed to boycott Nike and their hated new shirt after they offended millions by redrawing the St. George’s Cross in blue and purple. MailOnline can reveal that Nike has not changed the flags on any other of its national kits.
Speaking in Derbyshire today, Mr. Sunak said: ‘Obviously I prefer the original, and my general view is that when it comes to our national flags, we shouldn’t mess with them.
“Because they are a source of pride, identity, who we are, and they’re perfect as they are.”
The new kit will be worn by the team at Euro 2024 but the row over changing the traditional red cross threatens to overshadow a tournament Gareth Southgate’s side are amongst the favourites to win.
England’s most capped men’s player, Peter Shilton, said today: “This is wrong on every level. I’m totally against it. Including the price that Nike are going to charge.
“I don’t agree with it. It’s woke. If you’re going to put the St George’s Cross on a kit, which obviously Nike have done, then just put it on with the traditional colours. Like the Three Lions, it’s traditional.”
Nike and the Football Association have failed to adequately explain why the flag is blue and purple rather than red and white – just calling it “playful” and a homage to the 1966 team’s training top.
Former Football Association boss Adrian Bevington today admitted that he would not have signed off on the new shirt and said: “It’s our flag. It’s a national identity and I just don’t really think it needs to be changed.”
Former England goalkeeper David Seaman, who played 75 times for his country, said he believed many in his generation of players would have refused to wear it.
He said this morning: “It doesn’t need fixing. What’s next, are they going to change the Three Lions to three cats? Leave it alone. It’s the St George’s Flag. Leave it alone. I’m sure that if they’d approached the lads and asked them about it, they would have said no. Just leave it alone.”
Culture Secretary Lucy Frazer tweeted: “Fans should always come first, and it’s clear that this is not what fans want. Our national heritage – including St George’s Cross – brings us together. Toying with it is pointless and unnecessary.”
More than 16,000 people have signed an online petition to scrap the new shirt and start again and an online campaign to boycott Nike is in full swing because critics are fed up with national pride being painted as a negative thing – or even equated with racism.
Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer has also criticised the decision, saying the original colours were “unifying” and questioning why they had been changed.
However, Nike appears to have no intention of changing it, saying it has “flown off the shelves” since its release on Monday.
The company says that “the trim on the cuffs takes its cues from the training gear worn by England’s 1966 heroes, with a gradient of blues and reds topped with purple. The same colours also feature an interpretation of the flag of St. George on the back of the collar.”
The FA is understood to “completely stand by” the design.
Worth reading in full.
Stop Press: The Telegraph website is displaying an image of an even more obviously woke flag design, located on the inside of the away kit. The stripes strongly resemble the colours added to the original pride flag in recent years to represent transgender and ethnic minority people (pictured below).
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Did Nike take this upon themselves or is it a distraction to avoid boycotting the English team games, or perhaps every team in the FA?
The PM thinks flags “are a source of pride, identity, who we are, and they’re perfect as they are”. Is that to maintain an illusion of national identity as it seems like everything else is considered fair-game?
I boycotted Nike 5 years ago for exploiting Chinese slave labour.
Actually, weren’t we supposed to be boycotting Nike because of that emaciated little man who parodies a woman? Delvaney dude…Wasn’t he modelling their sports bras, or some such nonsense? I feel like so much lunacy has happened between then and now, it’s hard to keep up.
I suppose I could try to double boycott them? Not sure what that might mean though.
One thing’s for sure, I was never a potential customer for their £125 football kit.
Well I can’t believe me and Sushi agree on something at last. Nobody should be going around bastardizing countries’ flags, period. On a separate topic, here’s a load of women behaving like they can’t find their way back to their padded cells. They don’t strike me as St George flag-wavers. I do like the meme underneath, and if you can’t see it it says: ”Support the country you live in or live in the country you support”. 100% concur;
”White British women shave their hair off to show solidarity with Palestine during a protest outside Parliament.
In the latest poll conducted in Gaza and the West Bank, 71% of Palestinians still support the Oct 7th massacre where hundreds of women were r*ped and over 1,200 men, women and children lost their lives.
The poll was conducted by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research.”
https://twitter.com/OliLondonTV/status/1771168810214584558
An interesting article on the New York Times October 7th Expose. Facts seem hard to come by.
“In the podcast interview, Schwartz details her extensive efforts to get confirmation from Israeli hospitals, rape crisis centers, trauma recovery facilities, and sex assault hotlines in Israel, as well as her inability to get a single confirmation from any of them. ‘She was told there had been no complaints made of sexual assaults,’ the Times spokesperson acknowledged after The Intercept brought the Channel 12 podcast episode to the paper’s attention.”
https://theintercept.com/2024/02/28/new-york-times-anat-schwartz-october-7/
The female bodies showed evidence of sexual assault and violence.
The Jews are never believed, are they.
I said facts seem hard to come by. This was the case for the “Israeli filmmaker and former air force intelligence official” Schwartz who worked on the NYT article attempting to verify the claims made.
Even your statement diverges significantly from the “hundreds of women were r*ped” claim.
“Shop with your own people. Try to trade with English men and women and shun the others who we never wanted here.”
Do you think similar comments preceded the persecution of groups such as Jews?
It’s hard to boycott a product I never have bought and never will.
Something tells me that the England games at Euro ’24 will be awash with traditional England shirts and flags with a healthy dose of Union Jack’s on top.
£125 for something Nike will have paid £1.25 for out of a sweatshop? Wearing one of the shirts is an outright boasting of one’s stupidity.
Gordon Bennett, the world has gone officially insane when hot cross buns are getting cancelled and receiving the Nike treatment!
”Iceland has removed the cross from some of its hot cross buns and is replacing it with a tick – infuriating shoppers who are now threatening to boycott the chain.
The British supermarket is running a trial ditching the cross, which symbolises the crucifixion of Jesus Christ that is remembered by Christians on Good Friday.
Iceland claimed its research had found a fifth of customers would prefer the buns to have a tick, which bears a resemblance to the logo of sportswear firm Nike – but the firm also insisted that traditional hot cross buns will still be available at its stores.”
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13222767/iceland-swap-symbol-good-friday-treat-upsetting-worshippers.html
Boycott
Shop with your own people. Try to trade with English men and women and shun the others who we never wanted here. Halal is disgusting muslim crap and must be boycotted utterly
What “research” did Iceland carry out and why? Surely there are more pressing concern from shoppers?
Go on – do a ‘playful’ update on ‘Old Glory’ for a USA team. I dare you.
Try putting a flag up in your garden and the thought police will be around telling you it is offensive to the rest of the world that are arriving in small boats everyday. Let’s not wait till something daft appears on a football shirt. We should have been kicking up a stink long before this.
Can’t go dafter than this. The Deputy Chief Fire Officer, Humberside
Cannot quite see that coloured thing on his lapel but I get the idea.
The weird thing is that Nike hasn’t “playfully” changed the flag designs of any other countries in the Euro 2024. Not one.
Only England. Globalists want to wipe out the whole idea of England and the English People and their descendants around the world.
Fans should demand that Nike “playfully” change the Crescent Moon & Star flag symbol on the Turkish team’s kit, and see how that would go down with the Turks.
Sunak and Starmer never slow to dash toward a passing bandwagon. And Sunak declares ‘our nations flags’ Which nation is that Sunak? You and your government have denigrated this country and done nothing to prevent huge and unwanted immigration and the replacement of our people.
Spot on. I just found some interesting information about his financial links to Infosys/Global/HORIZON, as in the Postmasters Scandal:
Sunak, “The Maharaja of the Dales”, transferred his shares to his wife shortly before being elected as the Conservative MP for Richmond in 2015. Since 2015, she has owned shares worth £481 million in her father’s firm Infosys/Global/HORIZON, and was richer than the late Queen, and richer than King Charles III as of October 2022.
And do forget that Infosys is one of the largest digital ID companies in the world… it’s coming whether we like it or not
Well isn’t it the FA rather than Nike? I mean the FA must have final say, surely? And in a similar vein surely the FA has some say in the price – they award the contract exclusively so they should be able to negotiate some terms. I’m no fan of Nike but the FA need to take some blame and some flak here. I love sport but not a fan of the marketing side of it anyway.
Ban the FA from naming the England Football team, they can play under another name.
Someone commenting on Neil Oliver’s GB News interview about this pointed out the real reason the England flag is hated by the Unholy Muslim-Marxist Alliance:
because it is the flag of the Crusaders.
I suspect many England players and the management team will be happy with this. They hate British values, kneel before black extremists, support trans cr@p and every other woke ideology. They do not represent England.
Nike are full on woke, I wouldn’t wear their brand for free.
Maybe Mike Ashley could bring out an England shirt with English flags and sell it for halk the price of Nike’s. I’d buy one even though I don’t watch football.