England flags discouraged at Wetherspoons over ‘inconsistency’

Wetherspoons has announced it will ask its managers not to fly England flags from its pubs during the world cup in order to keep “consistency” across all venues.

The pub chain has sent out bunting featuring the flags of all 32 competing nations and will welcome customers wearing football shirts or draped in their own flags, despite some reports claiming they had banned them from doing so.

Wetherspoons said if pub managers want to “put up a flag they can but we aren’t encouraging it”. A spokesman said: “On one hand we aren’t encouraging staff to go freelance and put up your own flags. We run our business professionally and what we don’t want is inconsistency. One pub with a big flag and another without, whereas the bunting is in all pubs.”

Wetherspoons says pub managers would have to have a “very good reason” to stop someone from entering one of their pubs wearing football related attire.