England’s football kit has changed dramatically over the years but one feature typically remains unchanged: the cross of St George. Nike, which is designing the England kit for this summer’s Euro 2024 tournament in Germany, has redesigned the red and white flag in navy, light blue and purple. Why did it think doing so was a good idea?

The backlash has been predictably swift: Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer said the St George’s flag was a unifying symbol which should not be changed: ‘We just need to be proud of it. So I think they should just reconsider this and change it back.’ Rishi Sunak said the flag should not be ‘messed with’. And Nigel Farage called the design ‘an absolute joke’.

Nike’s response was predictable

Nike’s response was equally predictable. They have no plans to withdraw the shirts after the reaction of ruddy-faced conservatives, and the ‘playful update to the cross of St George’ is a symbol which ‘appears on the collar to unite and inspire’. The message was unmistakeable: calm down, granddad, this is just light-hearted, inclusive fun. Stop being so serious!

It’s important to retain a sense of perspective here: a slightly wacky rebrand of the flag of St George is not a vicious attack on English identity, and this is a classic teacup-contained tempest which will probably dissipate. There is, however, one wider question prompted by the whole brouhaha: why was it even done in the first place? What motivated Nike?

Starmer had a theory: ‘I’m not even sure they properly can explain why they thought they needed to change (it) in the first place’. Perhaps he’s right. What is true is that, all too often, there is a feeling that change is inherently virtuous. If you make something different, the thinking goes, you make it better: it is the defiant opposite of the German concept of Verschlimmbesserung, an attempted improvement which only makes things worse.

This belief in the goodness of ‘shaking things up a bit’ draws on another underlying belief, which is that the past is somehow shameful, bad, deficient, even immoral. That being the case, it must be reshaped to accommodate our current mores: hence, a few months ago, the Museum of London hurled itself into an absurd argument that the Black Death was doubly well named, given the possibility that it might have disproportionately killed black women. So, too, we are now told that the Roman emperor Elagabalus may, in fact, have been transgender. These are modern, progressive concepts pressed onto the façade of a history which would barely understand them, to make us now feel better about them then.

If you believe the past was nebulously bad and therefore change is good, you are likely to find easy satisfaction when people like Nigel Farage are outraged by your latest stunt. But that doesn’t mean that what you did is right.

Of course Nike is not part of a masterplan to ‘wokify’ the world. But the row over a football shirt lifts the veil on an underlying mentality which is prevalent, unthinking and presumptuous. Past bad, change good, conservatism therefore bad, progressivism by that reasoning good. Nike may not be plotting, but they are an individual wave in a wider tide.