Sketch: As Brave Boris knows, you're not a Cosmopolitan Liberal unless you've got a flag

Boris made the 'liberal cosmoplitan' case for Brexit and it sounded a lot like the tiny-minded nationalism he so hates

Boris Johnson outlines the case for leaving the Europeanan Union (PA)

If there’s one thing the liberal, cosmopolitan elite won’t tolerate it’s a rubbish flag. For liberal, cosmopolitan types, having the right type of flag to wave off your front porch with nationalistic fervour is crucially important.

Polling data suggests that large swathes of the liberal cosmopolitan elite, from Emma Thompson all the way through to Yoko Ono, have lost sight of just how much they love waving flags, and so it was quite right of Boris Johnson to remind them exactly what’s at stake by leaving the European Union.

Boris is “sick of being portrayed as a small-minded xenophobe”, he claimed, and so on Monday morning gave a speech billed as the ‘liberal, metropolitan case for Brexit.” This was to be the great appeal to the chin-stroking classes to come to the enlightened side of history and hang out with Nigel Farage and Donald Trump.

“If you walk around London today, you will notice that the 12 star flag of the EU is flying all over the place,” he said, looking every bit as outraged anyone in his position might be able to pretend to be. “That is because today is Schuman day. It is the birthday of the founder of the EU project, and the elites have decreed that it should be properly marked. Do we feel loyalty to that flag? Do our hearts pitter-patter as we watch it flutter over public buildings?”

I think I speak for the whole liberal cosmopolitan community when I say, ‘No it does not, Boris! No it does not!’

If I may shoehorn in a personal anecdote, it is precisely as Benedict Cumberbatch told me when I happened to bump into him last week in Romford market, walking his bulldog in his little Union Jack bodywarmer, limping gingerly back from getting yet another St George’s Cross tattooed on his arse: “I love the Common Fisheries Policy,” he said. “I love it! And subsidiarity is great, obviously, especially when first pillar legislation is repealed and replaced as secondary pillar. You only get that in the goold old EU. And who doesn’t want to ban prawn cocktail crisps? Not me, and not Sir Ian McKellen either by the way.

“But here's the problem. We just don’t feel loyalty to the flag. Why is no one speaking up for the concerns of good, honest, flag waving cosmopolitan liberals like me?”

Well now Boris is. And flags are important after all, especially as the Prime Minister thinks we’ll probably all be going to war soon. It was, to borrow a phrase from our soon to be sworn enemies, a remarkable volte face. “I am not saying for one moment that Britain couldn’t survive outside the European Union, of course we could. We are a great country,” David Cameron has said to virtually every office worker in the land at some point over the last three months. On Monday morning, in a speech at the British Museum, he didn't explicitly say we in fact couldn't survive outside the EU, but he did say we'd first have to fight a long and bloody war with at least Germany, and probably France too.

“The serried rows of white headstones in lovingly-tended Commonwealth war cemeteries stand as silent testament to the price that this country has paid to help restore peace and order in Europe,” he said, deftly adapting the op-ed he wrote for Barack Obama in the Telegraph two weeks ago so that only 90 per cent of it remained identical. “Can we be so sure that peace and stability on our continent are assured beyond any shadow of doubt? Is that a risk worth taking?”

If we get our flag back, hell yeah it is. Just point me and Yoko the way to the trenches.