JD Vance blasts 'crazies' who object to flying English flag in explosive intervention

JD Vance has urged people to "push back against the crazies" who object to flying the English flag, in another explosive transatlantic intervention from the US vice-president into freedom of expression.

Vance did not hold back when asked to comment on the summer grassroots campaign Operation Raise the Colours, which resulted in councils in Birmingham and Tower Hamlets pulling down flags from lampposts and bridges, reported The Times.

The 41-year-old vice-president, who holidayed in Britain this summer, has spoken out several times about examples of "infringements on free speech" in the UK. The news comes as some residents joked that painting Union flags will get fridges ‘collected quicker’.

Asked by the Fox News presenter Will Cain if he had seen how "the English flag has simultaneously become controversial and patriotic", Vance began by saying that a friend of his had been afraid of flying the US flag in 2020 at the height of Black Lives Matter protests.

"You see the same things happening in Europe, and I think we just have to be on guard against this stuff," Vance said. "It's OK to be proud of your country. It's in fact a good thing to be proud of your country.

"We should push back against the crazies who say we should be so ashamed of our culture and of our heritage that we shouldn't be willing to fly a flag. It's craziness. We got to call that craziness out. I'd encourage our European friends to follow suit."

Vance told David Lammy, the foreign secretary, earlier this month that the UK risked following the Biden administration in going down the "very dark path" of "censoring rather than engaging with a diverse array of opinions".

At the Munich security conference in February, Vance singled out "very dear friends, the United Kingdom" for a "backslide in conscience rights".

He added: "A little over two years ago, the British government charged Adam Smith-Connor, a 51-year-old physiotherapist and an Army veteran, with the heinous crime of standing 50 metres from an abortion clinic and silently praying for three minutes, not obstructing anyone, not interacting with anyone, just silently praying on his own."

A couple of weeks later, during Sir Keir Starmer's first meeting with President Trump in the Oval Office, Vance said that "infringements on free speech" in the UK did not just affect the British but also American tech companies "and by extension American citizens".

Starmer responded: "We've had free speech for a very long time, it will last a long time, and we are very proud of that."