Run it up a Brummie flagpole and see if it really is patriotic

As you reach Weoley Castle on the 15-minute drive from Birmingham city centre, the streets suddenly change.

- Andrew Anthony

It’s not that they’re leafier, more suburban or more ethnically homogeneous, but that all the lampposts are adorned in union flags and St George's crosses, as if a national celebration were under way on a curiously local level.

Weoley (pronounced “wee-lee”) is the centre of what some see as a col-ourful patriotic trend and others as a disturbing nationalist movement that in recent days has spread to towns and cities as far apart as Newcastle, Bristol and Norwich.

Birmingham city council has identified the flags as “dangerous” and said it will remove them for safety reasons. Many of those that were removed have been quickly replaced.