Once upon a flag

    The Union Jack is instantly and universally recognizable: it flies proudly from government buildings, is waved gaily at the Last Night of the Proms, and is draped enthusiastically over the shoulders of victorious British athletes. It is also cheerfully quoted in dozens of contexts – anything from James Bond films to advertisements for cheese, from novelty boxer shorts to punk fashion – and remains synonymous with Great Britain and the "Empire on which the sun never set". […]
    It was carried across the globe as the ensign of the British Empire, and was a symbol of everything that went with it. Centuries later, the Union Jack has arrived in the present day, where […] it remains very much alive as a potent political symbol. Indeed, because it is explicitly a flag of union, the Union Jack is a perpetual reminder of the unity – and disunity – between the nations of Britain, and of the persistent problems of compromise in defining a British identity. […]

    Now, after two millennia in which the kingdoms dreamt of union and then strove to extend that vision of unity worldwide, the past century has seen the Union in decline: the dismantling of the British Empire, the independence of the Republic of Ireland, and more recently in 1999, the limited devolution of Scotland and Wales in the founding of the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh National Assembly. […]
    Like the United Kingdom, the Union Jack is an invention, assembled from different parts that have been subtly altered in order to retain their identity as part of a larger whole. The flag is a carefully balanced compromise, both a map and a history: a perpetual reminder and emblem of unification. Consequently, as the relationship between the four nations within the British Union shifts, the very concept of Britain itself is being rethought. Where does this leave the flag?