“FARCE” barely describes the process by which New Zealand is deciding whether or not it needs a new flag. John Key, the prime minister, caught everyone by surprise during last year’s general-election campaign when he floated the idea of changing it. He wanted to get rid of the present one, which incorporates Britain’s Union Jack as well as the stars of the Southern Cross, to one that, as he put it to The Economist, “screams New Zealandness”. The immediate reaction was that this was at best an irrelevance, at worst a cynical diversion from the difficult stuff of politics.

Mr Key himself once favoured a silver fern on a black background—until the uncanny likeness to the flag used by the jihadists of Islamic State was pointed out to him. The project is now in the hands of his deputy, Bill English. A group of 12 prominent people, none of them a designer, was appointed to a “Flag Consideration Panel”, chaired by a former law professor; the public was invited to submit designs. New Zealanders put forward 10,000 offerings. The panel narrowed the choice to four, which the cabinet approved.

The plan was that a postal referendum this year would pick one of the four. A second referendum, next March, would choose between that and the present flag. This process was cemented into legislation. Three of the four winning designs have versions of fern leaves. The fourth has a koru, a spiral based on an unfolding fern that figures widely in Maori carving. The fern features on the graves of New Zealanders who died in European wars, on many New Zealand products and is a symbol for the All Blacks, the country’s famed rugby team. Air New Zealand, the national flag-carrier, already sports ferns on some of its planes.

Things have not gone to plan. None of the four designs has gripped the public. A fifth design, known as the Red Peak option, composed of triangles and supposed to evoke Maori mythology, has acquired a following on social media. So far the government is having none of it. Mr Key says that he is not going back to Parliament to accommodate the fifth design, though an electoral-law expert has helpfully suggested that all the government need do is substitute it for one of the chosen four.