Waterloo Place

The Banksy statue in Waterloo Place went up in the early hours of 29 April 2026, lowered onto its plinth by a crane while St James's was asleep, and by the time the first people walked past on their way to work it looked as though it had always been there. That is most of the joke. Waterloo Place is a square of bronze men on stone plinths, with the Crimean War memorial at one end and a king on horseback at the other, and Banksy simply added one more.

His figure is a man in a suit, stepping forward with a large flag held out in front of him. The wind has blown the cloth back over his face, so he can't see where he is going, and his front foot is already off the edge of the plinth. The signature is cut into the stone below him. Banksy confirmed the work was his the following day, 30 April, with a video of the installation filmed at night, which is the closest he comes to a press release.

He hasn't given the statue a title. Most coverage calls it Blinded by the Flag, and some catalogues list it as Blind Patriotism, but neither name came from him, and we have used neither here for that reason.

What it is saying

It doesn't take much reading. A man so wrapped up in his flag that he can't see the drop in front of him, placed among memorials to empire and to war, is about as plain as Banksy gets, and the setting does most of the work. What makes it more than a cartoon is the scale and the finish, because from across the street it passes as a real civic statue, and it is only when you get close that the flag stops being heroic and starts being a problem.

It also fits a thread that runs right through his prints. The Flag print from 2006 puts children on top of a burnt-out car, raising a flag in the pose of the famous Iwo Jima photograph, and it has the same target: the flag as something people hold up without looking at what is underneath it. Twenty years separate the two works and the idea hasn't moved much, which says something about how long he has been making the same point, and about how long it has stayed relevant.

What Westminster has done

Westminster City Council's first move was to protect the work rather than remove it. It called the statue a striking addition to the city's public art, put fencing around it so it couldn't be damaged or taken, and kept it open to anyone who wanted to look. The council has described itself as the statue's custodian and has been in contact with Banksy's team, while Banksy keeps the copyright in the work itself.

Over the summer the question became whether it stays. The council said in July that it expected to reach a conclusion by the end of the summer, and at the end of September it said it was still exploring all options, with the statue due to be discussed at a cabinet meeting. So as we write this, there is no decision, and the man with the flag is still on his plinth.

That is worth watching for reasons beyond this one piece. Street works by Banksy have been painted over, cut out of walls and sold, and damaged within hours, and a council choosing to keep one on purpose, in one of the most formal public spaces in London, would be a real shift in how the city treats him.

Does a statue move the print market?

We looked, because it is the question collectors ask whenever Banksy does something public. The Banksy Index, which tracks the whole print market month by month, stood at 80.7 in April 2026 and 80.4 in May, which is to say it didn't react at all. The index has been rising slowly through 2026, and it has kept doing so since, but there was no jump in the weeks after the statue appeared.

That matches what we see after most of his public works. A new piece brings attention, and attention brings new buyers to the market eventually, but the prices of prints from 2003 and 2004 are set by the supply of those prints coming up at auction, and one new statue in London doesn't change how many Girl with Balloons are for sale. If the council does decide to keep it permanently, it will be interesting to see whether that changes over a longer stretch, and we will come back to it when there is something to measure.

If you want to see it before anything is decided, it stands in Waterloo Place, just off Pall Mall and a short walk from Piccadilly Circus.