The Department for Education’s latest venture in the culture war has landed with aplomb, after it encouraged all school children to sing a new flag-waving song by the One Britain One Nation campaign this Friday. The repeated lyrics of “Strong Britain, Great Nation” only helped encourage the North Korean-esque visuals. Have a listen to the catchy tune above.

Despite lyrics like “We celebrate our differences with love in our hearts”, the loony left and FBPE brigade have spent the last 12 hours screeching about it being neo-fascist propaganda. Some have also been claiming it’s a cooked-up government strategy to capitalise on Brexit nationalism. Unfortunately for them, the facts prove the song is far from Brexit-inspired. The campaign group One Britain, One Nation was started by former policeman Kash Singh way back in 2005, with the hope of “[bringing] us together, not to focus on our differences but to celebrate the values we share: tolerance, kindness, pride, respect, and a tremendous desire to help others.” Left-wing conspiracy theorists can stand down…

While the campaign was started by Singh, it has had support from MPs including Esther McVey and Phillip Davies. There was even a short-lived APPG, the officer of which was Labour MP John Grogan…

Overnight, government sources tried putting distance between themselves and the song via Playbook:

“Everyone in the government is at pains to stress they don’t all want children to be forced to sing about how much they love the country and the idea for the song didn’t come from them.”

This rowing back will be difficult, however, given Gavin Williamson endorsed the campaign in the Commons only yesterday:

Last night, Guido asked departmental sources whether Gavin will be singing along on Friday. His messages went unanswered…