A victory by any other name would taste as sweet

Imagine being the first man from the United Kingdom to win the Wimbledon Championships in seventy-seven years, then coming home to find the nation’s mood isn’t exclusively jubilant. After an impressive, euphoric win in three straight sets, it’s rather surprising that large swathes of old and new media are focussed not on Andy Murray, but on First Minister Alex Salmond, who excitedly waved a Scottish flag from the audience at the end of the match.

“It’s political,” critics say. It seems hyperbolic, though, to suggest there’s something wrong with the First Minister of Scotland celebrating a Scottish athlete’s victory with a Scottish flag – after all, Salmond wasn’t the only one in the audience with a saltire. Characterising the move as political relies on an interpretation of the Scottish flag as a symbol of the SNP or the independence movement, and all but the most fervent unionists must be aghast at the idea of surrendering a national symbol to one political faction.

Some have made this out to be an argument about Scottishness vs. Britishness, but this should by no means be the case; as many have pointed out, it’s quite easy to be both Scottish and British. The claim that Salmond was trying to “hijack” a British victory is therefore unpalatable, given that Scotland’s current constitutional status ought to give Scots and Britons equal right to celebrate Murray’s victory. As Deputy First Minister Nicola Sturgeon’s Twitter intervention read: “Waving the saltire isn’t political. It’s showing enormous pride that a boy from Dunblane just won Wimbledon.”

A mentality that says a British celebration – complete with a Union Flag draped over the table bearing the trophy – is okay, but a Scottish celebration is not, is one which seeks to de-legitimise the Scottish national identity, while simultaneously encouraging a conflation of Scottish identity with support of Scottish independence. Doing so will only exacerbate cultural tension and undermine the serious political debate which is taking place ahead of next year’s independence referendum. Fuelled by faux outrage, those attacking Salmond’s tennis audience etiquette are aggressively derailing an important constitutional discussion.

It is also a mentality which ignores the decision of our avowedly unionist Prime Minister, David Cameron, to raise the Scottish flag over 10 Downing Street on the morning of Murray’s match, clearly indicating that the saltire has not been disowned by institutions of the Union. That being the case, how can we deny the First Minister the right to raise the flag himself? The only opportunistic politicking here is from those who want to exclude the use of Scotland’s flag from particular politicians. Rational Scots and Britons can surely rise above that.