Tory MP Andrea Jenkyns shares picture of wrong Union Jack flag and accidentally deletes Northern Ireland

You’d hope that with all the flag-waving that we’ve seen in the UK that a politician could recognise a Union Jack when they see one.

Unfortunately, it would seem that isn’t the case when it comes to Tory MP Andrea Jenkyns.

With the public going to the polls on Thursday for the local and mayoral elections as well as the all-important by-election in Hartlepool, Jenkyns put out a generic tweet encouraging people to Vote Conservative complete with a gif of the Union Jack.

However, the MP for Morley and Outwood in West Yorkshire and ardent Brexiteer didn’t analyse the gif very thoroughly as she somehow shared a very old version of the flag.

The flag Jenkyn’s shared and has since deleted did not feature the red cross going from corner to corner on the flag which represents Northern Ireland. This version of the flag was used in 1707 until 1801 when it was replaced with the Union Jack that we all recognise now.

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As mentioned, Jenkyns soon realised that she had shared the wrong flag and swiftly deleted the image but it was grabbed by a few folks online meaning that it’ll probably live on in internet infamy for years to come.

A Jenkyns parody account also took the opportunity to poke fun.

Jenkyns has since replaced her tweet with a more recognisable and up-to-date version of the Union Jack.

She also later insisted that she was not trying to make a political point, telling the Mirror it was an “honest mistake”.

In fairness to Jenkyns, the old version of the flag is the sixth gif that appears when you search for ‘Union Jack’ in Twitter’s gif selection, so someone at their end might wanna look into that.

All in all, it pays to study your flags folks.