LONDON — England’s flag flutters in pub gardens, is painted onto the faces of smiling children and is waved in support of the national women’s soccer team by cheering crowds that reflect the capital’s ...

RUGBY, England—Stuart Field raised his first flags in July: the English red cross of St. George and also a smattering of the British red, white and blue, hanging them from his hometown’s streetlights.

Operation Raise the Colours has swelled the nation with pride as motorists flash under bridges and pedestrians doff their flat caps to England’s red cross and the union flag. By jingo it’s been fun.

A city council in Britain has sought a legal order to prohibit unauthorised flags and banners from being fixed near roads, not an outright ban of the national flag.

There are no prizes for subtlety in British politics. But there are prizes for the winners of “Tapp Into Reading”, a scheme where children in Dover and Deal, the constituency home to the White Cliffs, ...