JD Vance eased back in his big, red, very important chair. He breathed in, as if inhaling the vapours of history from the oil paintings on the walls around him. He tipped his head backwards, so that the soft upholstery might squish against the nape of its neck. He wriggled his shoulder blades. History was massaging him now. This is how he likes it. He was in the room where it happens. He turned toward his interlocutor. “Does this room have a name?”
The foreign secretary’s eyes widened. It’s not JD Vance’s fault. He doesn’t know. You’re not supposed to ask David Lammy simple general knowledge-based questions like this. Fearing a full, Celebrity Mastermind PTSD flashback, an aide quickly interjected. “It’s, erm, it’s the drawing room,” she said. Crisis averted. Another minute of this and Lammy could easily have ended up claiming the winner of the Nobel prize in physics in 1903 was Marie Antoinette.
Anyway, not that historic after all. Simply the “drawing room” at Chevening House in Kent, of which the main claim to fame is an entirely erroneous one, that it was the inspiration for Rosings Park in Pride and Prejudice. To be clear, that’s a novel by Jane Austen, not yet another insider’s account of life in the Trump White House.
Traditionally, at this point, Vance likes to ritualistically humiliate whoever’s around. If all he’s doing is being gently demeaning then you know he likes you
KIN CHEUNG/POOL/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
This wasn’t quite the room where it happens then, not least as no one quite knew what was happening, not even the two men themselves. This was, theoretically, a short extension to the Vance family holiday in the Cotswolds, and now here he was, wearing a suit and tie, holding a de facto press conference with the UK foreign secretary but without saying very much at all.
Vance spoke of how his children had been sleeping on the floor at Chevening. “Our two families really get along,” he said. This wasn’t a bi-lat, more of a guy-lat. Before the meeting, some photographs had been revealed, of Vance and Lammy, in seeming paroxysms of joy, laughing and casting fishing lines into the lake. Everyone knows, these days, that politics is the route into the podcasting business and on this evidence, it’s time to be afraid.
White House and Mortifying: Gone Fishing would be a whole new low. Just imagine our two hosts — from different sides of the political tracks, obviously — casting their lines and talking tough breeze about the atrocities in Gaza, the war in Ukraine and the general sense of collapse of the liberal-democratic order. Who’s gonna bite? Who’s gonna bite?
“All of my kids caught a fish but the foreign secretary did not, I’m sorry,” said Vance. He patted the foreign secretary on the arm. It was then that you knew the affection between the two men was real. Traditionally, at this point, Vance likes to ritualistically humiliate whoever’s around. If all he’s doing is being gently demeaning then you know he likes you.
Vance with his wife, Usha, and Lammy with his wife, Nicola
BEN DANCE/FCDO
Despite being vice-president of the United States, he still has plenty of time to argue with people on social media, those arguments being characterised by his predilection for calling other people “dummies”.
Lammy, who had mainly been staring into the middle distance, now narrowed his attention to the near distance. Why did life have to be like this? It’s so unfair. He’s mates with Obama, don’t you know. Actual, real, proper mates. They go back years. They go out for dinner every time the Obamas are in London. Why couldn’t Obama have extended his holiday with a visit to see his big, important house?
Maybe they already have, who knows? If they did, they certainly wouldn’t have made him hold a fishing rod, clearly for the first time in his life, then casually but knowingly demean him for being rubbish at it.
Mainly, the two of them are together to discuss, in private, the continuing crisis in Gaza, on which the US and the UK now have what Vance called some “disagreements”, principally on whether to recognise Palestinian statehood formally, which France has done and the UK may yet do.
“The United Kingdom is going to make its decision,” said Vance. “But we have no plans to recognise a Palestinian state.”
He eased back in his chair again and let out a slight smile. At this point, he declined to gently pat the foreign secretary on the arm a second time. He didn’t need to. Pictures speak louder than words, especially in the drawing room.