Can we have some black in the Union Jack?

My old friend from the days when she flew the red flag over ‘Fortress Islington’, culture minister Margaret Hodge, has been getting into bother over flag-related things again.

She told parliament this week that she would consider a redesign of the union flag to incorporate the hammer and sickle (or was it the Welsh dragon? It wasn’t clear from the press reports), which was inexplicably overlooked when the national flag was created.

She told MPs: ‘The Welsh dragon was not included on the union flag as the principality of Wales was already united with England by 1606 when the first union flag was created. I can assure all MPs that the issue of the design of the union flag will be considered.’

She warned them, however, that: ‘As the current flag is formed by merging three heraldic crosses representing the three kingdoms of the UK, the original design was a challenge. Thinking of a new design that would meet everyone's aspiration would be an even greater challenge.’

Hodge was responding to complaints from Welsh MPs, including Labour’s Ian Lucas, who said Welsh identity had been suppressed for the best part of 500 years, ever since the 1536 Act of Union between England and Wales. Wales is the only one of the ‘home nations’ not represented on the union flag, which is made up of the crosses of St George (for England) and St Patrick (Ireland) and the saltire of St Andrew (Scotland).

We could kill three birds with one stone here. By taking the black background from the flag of St David and adding it to the union flag, we could recognise Wales and the multicultural nature of modern Britain and give ourselves an anarcho-socialist banner that we'd feel happy carrying on demos. And the BNP could keep the other one.