I was at the last night of the proms. I go if I can be bothered to get through the process of getting a ticket.
I've been a handful of times in the last few years. This time was pretty exceptional.
If any of you saw it, the entire auditorium is filled with EU flags and people wearing EU berets.
If you watch it, it looks like a staged protest. It looks deliberate that all these people brought these flags with them to make a point, and it always looks like that.
But here's the thing every single time I go there is a pressure group that attends. I'm sure many of them don't even have tickets to the event. I think they attend just to hang around outside the hall and hassle, people actually going.
They come armed with masses of EU flags and these hats and they literally don't leave anyone alone handing them out.
The queue starts forming for the arena and gallery quite early before five pm. This pressure group, don't stop combing the queue and approaching anyone they can to hand out these free EU flags and hats.
Most people just take them because they're being handed out for free. Especially if they haven't brought their own flag So they've got something to wave. Equally I saw a few of them had been thrown in the bin.
But this group is so persistent, it actually gets quite oppressive. I think in the hour I was in the queue, I told somebody from this group. about five or six times no thank you to an EU flag. I voted remain but enough is enough, the vote was nearly a decade ago.
Watching the Last night of the proms it looks very much like a protest with all these eu flags filling the arena in particular. But here's the thing there was no organisation there.
None of these people brought those flags with them. They were literally handed out by the same pressure group that attend every year and don't leave people in the queue alone constantly trying to push these flags and hats onto people. I could see a few people took them just to be left alone and then threw them in the bin later on in the queue.
What is the point of creating a fake protest or making a fake statement that isn't actually there.
None of those people got up that morning and decided they were all going to bring eu flags to the last night of the proms. Virtually no one had brought one with them. They were all handed them out by a group in the queue for free. Almost no one decided to take a EU flag to the proms.