Introducing Vexillophobia: Fear of the Flag is Britain’s Greatest Madness

I recently returned from holiday. The segue from hot dry days oiled with rosé and factor 30 to a best-of-British grey rainy day was harsh. But as I took myself out for provisions, slapping my sandals through puddles under a leaden sky, my mood lifted. The high street was lined with our beautiful Union flags. Bright red, white and blue cut through the drizzle like fireworks. A reminder that this is home.

Not everyone feels the same. X, that great sewer of national neurosis, is on fire with polarised responses to a few flags on lampposts. Some of us see hope, pride and courage. Others see racism, fascism and the end of civilisation. And so I would like to coin a new word for our times: Vexillophobia.

Vexillology is the study of flags. A vexillophile is someone who loves them. I am amazed that no one else has coined the obvious opposite, vexillophobia, until now. Yet here we are, in a country that actually needs a word for people who recoil in horror at bunting.

A vexillophobe hates flags. They are allergic to bunting. They start to twitch at the sight of a fluttering Union Jack. The St George’s cross provokes maximum fear and outrage in the vexillophobe.

Take Andy Burnham, who said: “You can obviously display a flag if that’s your choice but I don’t know, I do wonder about the times we’re living in. It’s like people are seeking confrontation.” I think Andy Burnham is a vexillophobe.

He is not alone — vexillophobia is sweeping the land. Professor Kehinde Andrews told Good Morning Britain that people who put up flags are really signalling that “Britain is white and we shouldn’t be here”. Essex County Council sent staff a note warning that England flags on roundabouts might make people feel “unsettled”. The Archbishop of Canterbury, no less, complained last summer that nationalists “defile the flag they wrap themselves in”. Poor Justin, what does he make of the Last Night of the Proms when the Albert Hall becomes a glorious sea of flags, Rule Britannia! soaring and hearts pounding with joy? Perhaps he considers it a televised hate crime.

The media is consumed with bunting panic. NBC asked, ‘Patriotic pride or anti-immigrant campaign? Why the English flag is suddenly everywhere‘ and the BBC dourly warned: “National flags have started lining our streets. They may say something more.”

A YouGov survey last year revealed that one in four Britons has an unfavourable view of people who fly the Union Jack or St George’s Cross. Keir Starmer claimed that the Labour Party was the patriotic party, but Labour voters were 13 times more likely than Conservative supporters to describe England’s flag as “racist and divisive”. Almost half of Labour voters took a negative view of those who hang a St George’s Cross outside their home.

Parliament has an APPG on British Muslims, building on the APPG on Islamophobia which preceded it, and is determined to push for legal and institutional recognition of Islamophobia as a form of racism. There are APPGs dedicated to health and mental health. So, why is there no All-Party Parliamentary Group on vexillophobia? This country urgently needs one. MPs must step up and support sufferers of this terrible malady. Imagine how difficult it must be to go about your daily business while breaking into a cold sweat every time you pass a car dealership or a Wetherspoons festooned with Union Jacks. Truly, this is a silent epidemic.

And it gets worse, since I suspect the vexillophobes don’t just complain, they project. They accuse people who love flags of being “flag-shaggers”. No one is shagging flags — one wonders whether there is something distinctly Freudian about this insult?

No, I am afraid that vexillophobia is a giant red flag for hatred of one’s own nation — in other words, a form of contorted self-hatred. If you cannot take joy in your own country’s symbols, if you sneer at those who fly the flag at home, if it drives you mad to see your flag in the high street, then you have a deeper problem.

J.D. Vance has told patriotic Britons to “push back against the crazies”. But what should we do about the crazies themselves?

Fortunately, psychology has answers. The classic treatment for phobias is exposure therapy. Arachnophobes are encouraged to look at a spider from a distance, then closer, then to hold one in their hands until the fear subsides. Likewise, we can only hope that if vexillophobes are exposed to more and more flags they will not only be de-sensitised, but even learn to enjoy the thrilling colours and elegant geometry of one of the best flags in the world.

There is no cure but courage. Vexillophobes must learn to stand tall, eyes fixed on the flagpole, and embrace what they fear.

So, people, you know what to do. Proudly raise the colours. Hang a flag from your window, tie bunting across your garden, stick a Union Jack on your car. If nothing else, it will help our poor vexillophobic neighbours confront their demons.

The red, white and blue is ours. Let it fly.

This article was first published on Laura’s Substack, the Free Mind. Subscribe here.