J.D. Vance Begins U.K. Visit Amid Heightened Transatlantic Tensions

Vice President J.D. Vance will meet with British Foreign Secretary David Lammy at his country residence in the U.K. at a time of heightened transatlantic tensions. The meeting comes ahead of a private family holiday that will see Vance, his wife Usha, and their three children stay at the Grade 1 listed mansion Chevening, before heading to the Cotswolds, which has been dubbed the “Hamptons of England.” The bilateral meeting on Friday lacks a formal agenda, officials said, but is likely to cover trade and the Gaza and Ukraine crises. Prime Minister Keir Starmer last week announced that the U.K. would recognize a Palestinian state in September unless Israel agrees to a ceasefire and addresses the “intolerable” situation on the ground in Gaza. Lammy himself has said he is “appalled and sickened” by the suffering of Palestinians in Gaza, and accused Israel of “drip feeding” aid to the Strip. The White House has said that recognizing a Palestinian state would amount to “rewarding Hamas.” An upcoming summit between President Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin is also expected to be on the agenda. The U.K. and other European nations fear that a meeting would see Putin attempt to force Ukraine to unfavorable terms with President Volodymyr Zelensky not at the table. Exclusive: The Secret White House Backchannel That Paved the Way For Trump’s Summit With Putin But the Labour government has cultivated strong ties with the White House that may help it press its position. The U.K. in May became the first country to strike a trade deal with the U.S. The British Foreign Secretary has wooed Vance, describing him as a friend, and drawn a number of parallels between their working-class childhoods with a single mother and absent father. Lammy once said that Vance’s memoir reduced him to tears:“I said to JD: ‘Look, we’ve got different politics, but we’re both quite strong Christians and we both share quite a tough upbringing’.” That approach marks a different tone to when Lammy, as a backbench Member of Parliament years earlier, referred to Trump as a “far right extremist” and a “neo-Nazi.” But the Foreign Secretary had reportedly worked to cultivate ties with MAGA Republicans even before the 2024 U.S. election. The choice of the U.K. as a holiday will also bring renewed scrutiny to Vance’s past remarks about the country and its government. Vance once said that the U.K. could become the first “truly Islamist country that will get a nuclear weapon” under the Labour Party. He has also claimed that freedom of speech is being undermined in the U.K., referencing an incident from 2022 in which a man was convicted after breaching a safe zone outside an abortion clinic. The Vance-Lammy meeting comes weeks after Trump traveled to Scotland to visit his golf courses in a trip that included sit-downs with Starmer and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. Trump will return to the U.K. next month for an unprecedented second state visit, with King Charles hosting Trump and his wife Melania at Windsor Castle. Trade unions, pro-Palestinian demonstrators, and climate activists have warned that they will protest Vance’s U.K. trip.