{"id":932675,"date":"2026-05-02T10:11:22","date_gmt":"2026-05-02T10:11:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/932675\/"},"modified":"2026-05-02T10:11:22","modified_gmt":"2026-05-02T10:11:22","slug":"new-statue-proves-banksy-has-lost-his-anti-establishment-streak","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/932675\/","title":{"rendered":"New statue proves Banksy has lost his anti-establishment streak"},"content":{"rendered":"

Britain\u2019s most boring street-art propagandist has struck again. Banksy\u2019s latest installment statement<\/a> \u2014 a besuited man with a flag obscuring his face, mounted on a 12-foot plinth in the heart of Westminster \u2014 appeared in the early hours of Wednesday morning. It arrived, as these things often do, under cover of darkness \u2014 at a time when, one has to assume, the Metropolitan Police and Westminster Council\u2019s night teams were elsewhere, or asleep.<\/p>\n

The council has declared that, rather than immediately bulldozing this bit of illegal fly-tipping and sending it directly to landfill, the artist\u2019s latest midwitted incursion on the national conversation will be left up \u201cfor the public to enjoy\u201d while the authorities consider options.<\/p>\n

What, though, is there to enjoy? We have come a long way from the once-playful, mischievous humor of Banksy\u2019s early-2000s graffiti \u2014 stenciled images depicting little girls with balloons and rats with bazookas \u2014 which conveyed a clear moral disgust at consumerism and militarism. In recent years, that playfulness has been replaced by a more didactic, hectoring tone, increasingly resembling propaganda rather than provocation.<\/p>\n

The flag-waving figure can be read as a somewhat clumsy projection of what one might assume to be the artist\u2019s enduring source of anxiety: the populist revolt that has marked the past decade, and its perceived clash with the green, Left-liberal, progressive orthodoxy for which Banksy has often served as an unofficial mouthpiece.<\/p>\n

This self-styled avatar of street-level rebellion \u2014 once aligned with anti-establishment sentiment \u2014 has repeatedly framed that political shift as a source of alarm. In 2014, for example, Banksy traveled to Ukip-supporting Clacton-on-Sea with a stencil<\/a> depicting grey pigeons holding \u201cmigrants not welcome\u201d placards, contrasted against a more vibrant, \u201cforeign\u201d bird. And in the aftermath of the Brexit referendum, he produced a mural<\/a> in Dover showing EU stars being chipped away by a white, overalled laborer.<\/p>\n

Since then, the Bristol-born artist has increasingly aligned himself with a familiar set of progressive causes, from funding<\/a> migrant rescue efforts in the Mediterranean to sustained criticism<\/a> of Israel. The politics of national sovereignty, it\u2019s safe to say, is probably not to Banksy\u2019s tastes. That helps explain the symbolism of the flag-waving figure, especially in the context of a year in which English suburban discontent has taken on a visible, street-art form through the \u201cRaise the Colors\u201d phenomenon.<\/p>\n

The fact that Banksy\u2019s statue turned up a week before Britons go to the polls in the local elections is no accident. Nor is it especially surprising that Labour-run Westminster Council has been slow to get rid of it. If anything screams \u201cregime artist\u201d, it\u2019s having your artworks fawned over officialdom rather than swiftly removed.<\/p>\n

Whether the council will seek any meaningful consultation with residents is another question. And when it comes to public art and statues more broadly, decisions often appear to be made with limited regard for local sentiment, particularly when they align with prevailing \u201cprogressive\u201d preferences about what should be commemorated, removed, or replaced.<\/p>\n

Banksy\u2019s position by now seems fairly clear: the public should be nagged toward the \u201ccorrect\u201d view, and something of that contempt slips out again in the Instagram clip<\/a> promoting the statue\u2019s installation. After a montage of Union Jacks and statues of figures including Churchill, Clive of India, and Edward VII set to Elgar\u2019s \u201cPomp and Circumstance\u201d, the video ends with an elderly white Londoner in municipal high-vis. \u201cNo, I don\u2019t like it,\u201d he says of the statue. \u201cI prefer that statue up there,\u201d he adds, pointing to the gilded figure of Pallas Athena above the Athenaeum Club.<\/p>\n

The implication is fairly clear: this is a \u201cphilistine\u201d opinion and, in the Banksy framing, not one that particularly matters.<\/p>\n

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