Vance acknowledged the two men come from “different political spectrums” but said Lammy had been “kind enough to make time on a visit to [Washington] DC, we got to know each other a little bit then”.
Since that first meeting, when Lammy was in opposition and Vance had just been elected to the US Senate, they have met regularly including at the new Pope’s inauguration in May.
Last week, Lammy told the Guardian, external he, Vance and Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner bonded over drinks in the Villa Taverna, the US ambassador’s residence in Rome.
“I had this great sense that JD completely relates to me and he completely relates to Angela. So it was a wonderful hour and a half,” he said. “I was probably the shyest of the three.”
He said that, like Vance, Rayner and himself were “not just working-class politicians, but people with dysfunctional childhoods”.
Lammy’s parents split up during his teens. His father went to the US and Lammy never saw him again.
Vance told the story of his own upbringing – including an absent father and a mother with a drug addiction – in his bestselling memoir Hillbilly Elegy.
Despite their trickier starts in life, both ended up at prestigious US colleges. Lammy studied at Harvard, where he met and befriended Barack Obama. Vance went to Harvard’s rival Yale – “not quite as good,” Lammy joked at Chevening.
The two men have also bonded over their Christian faith. Vance converted to Catholicism as an adult and took mass with Lammy when he visited Washington DC earlier this year.
The pair have something else in common, although neither want to to draw attention to it: their previous less-than-flattering comments about Donald Trump.
JD Vance’s past verdict – “reprehensible”, “an idiot”, “I never liked him”.
And Lammy’s? “A tyrant” and “a woman-hating, neo Nazi sympathising sociopath”.
Be it political expediency or a genuine change of heart, both have since revised their opinions.