{"id":77070,"date":"2026-07-05T17:34:07","date_gmt":"2026-07-05T17:34:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/77070\/"},"modified":"2026-07-05T17:34:07","modified_gmt":"2026-07-05T17:34:07","slug":"jd-vance-says-he-loves-britain-its-pure-gaslighting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/77070\/","title":{"rendered":"JD Vance says he loves Britain. It\u2019s pure gaslighting"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Fourth of July is always something of an ambivalent moment when it comes to the so-called \u201cspecial relationship\u201d between the US and the UK. For America, it\u2019s a celebration of the birth of their nation. For Britain, the awkwardness is that they\u2019re celebrating first cutting us off and then defeating us in a protracted military conflict.<\/p>\n

Still, as his boss was trying and failing<\/a> to hold a spectacular 250th birthday celebration for America -the musical acts cancelled, the speeches started late, the crowds didn\u2019t show, and the whole thing was overshadowed by Taylor Swift\u2019s wedding \u2013 Vice President JD Vance was trying to make nice with Britain.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have a special affection for Britain,\u201d he told the Sunday Times in an interview. \u201cIf I\u2019m being honest, I think, as much as I care about it for reasons of mutual interest \u2013 and American alliances \u2013 I also just care about it because Britain feels more culturally familiar to me than any country on Earth, aside from my own.\u201d<\/p>\n

Brits could be forgiven for thinking that Vance has a damn strange way of showing it. He had almost no connection whatsoever with the UK until he met his wife, who went to university here. Since then, he\u2019s holidayed here often \u2013 including a stay in the Cotswolds last year. But he has hardly been a steadfast friend to Britain, to say the least.<\/p>\n

He has, in fact, spent more time acting as the face of the Trump administration\u2019s antipathy towards Europe as a whole, and the UK in particular. Vance has long opposed US funding to support Kyiv in its war against Russian occupation and aggression, and has frustrated European efforts to secure peace on acceptable terms \u2013 instead trying, along with his boss, to force through a deal favourable to Russia.<\/p>\n

He has spoken about abandoning Europe \u2013 and in turn Britain \u2013 to see to its own defence, upturning the basis of the Western alliance that propelled the US to becoming the world\u2019s richest nation, its most powerful, and its cultural hegemon all at once.<\/p>\n

At the same time, he has railed against the UK and European governments whenever they fail to share Trump\u2019s views on immigration, multiculturalism or any other issue. Most flagrantly, as the UK battled against far-right riots fuelled by racism, Vance put himself on the side of the violent mobs, rather than their victims, or the government trying to restore order.<\/p>\n

In the wake of the conviction of Henry Nowak\u2019s killer, Vance leapt onto X to exploit the tragedy<\/a>. \u201cHenry Nowak died the same way a civilization dies: abandoned, handcuffed by authorities who neither trusted nor cared for him, and accused of hate crimes he did not commit,\u201d he wrote at the start of a long message which also claimed that Mr Nowak \u201cshould still be alive today, and he would be if the last few generations of European elites had stood their ground against the politics of self-hatred and the mass invasion of migrants.\u201d<\/p>\n

Vance might well just be flanneling the UK in an interview with a British newspaper, saying the words he knows his interviewer wants to hear. But given his decision to holiday here, and the love of many of America\u2019s far right for a historical vision of Europe dating back to a (misunderstood) Roman Empire, Vance could very well be sincere in his supposed love for the country.<\/p>\n

If so, then his love is that of an abusive partner, the boyfriend who gaslights you into believing that his sustained cruelty is all done for your own good.<\/p>\n

If Vance loves the UK, he doesn\u2019t love the country it actually is \u2013 diverse, liberal, European, and forward-facing, the nation whose national dish is chicken tikka masala.\u00a0He loves some imagined English ethnostate, a Trumpian vision with a funny accent and pretty vistas upon which his boss can build golf courses and demolish windfarms.<\/p>\n

The UK has no need for that kind of love: Vance has no affection for Britain as it actually is, and we have no need to be molded into his vision of it. Your \u201cspecial affection\u201d is noted, Vice President. But you can stick it. We\u2019re happier being independent, too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Fourth of July is always something of an ambivalent moment when it comes to the so-called \u201cspecial…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":77071,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2],"tags":[13,361,22,5427,37],"class_list":["post-77070","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-britain","tag-britain","tag-donald-trump","tag-far-right","tag-jd-vance","tag-usa"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@UnitedKingdom\/116868577075914261","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77070","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=77070"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77070\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/77071"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=77070"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=77070"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=77070"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}