David Lammy has spoken of his friendship with the US vice-president, JD Vance, as the pair can relate over their \u201cdysfunctional\u201d working-class childhoods.<\/p>\n
In a series of interviews with the Guardian<\/a>, conducted over several weeks, the foreign secretary opened up about a \u201cwonderful hour and a half\u201d spent with Vance over drinks at the US embassy in Italy in May alongside the deputy prime minister, Angela Rayner.<\/p>\n Lammy said he had been to mass at Vance\u2019s home and counted him as a \u201cfriend\u201d, saying the vice-president \u201crelates\u201d to him over their shared background.<\/p>\n \u201cI remember being at the inauguration of the new pope in Rome with Angela Rayner<\/a> and JD Vance,\u201d he said: \u201cI don\u2019t think JD and Angela will mind me saying that they were having a couple of drinks \u2026 I really wanted a glass [of ros\u00e9] but instead I had a Diet Coke.\u201d<\/p>\n The foreign secretary said they were all \u201cnot just working-class politicians, but people with dysfunctional childhoods\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cI 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,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n In his interview, Lammy spoke of feeling guilty over the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy\u2019s, highly awkward first meeting with Donald Trump and Vance in the Oval Office, where the men berated him over the war<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cIf I\u2019m being honest, I felt, arrghhh!\u201d Lammy said. \u201cWhy hadn\u2019t I done more to support our Ukrainian colleagues in preparation for their meeting?\u2026 I was being a bit hard on myself. But I still felt guilty.\u201d<\/p>\n The foreign secretary also touched on his discomfort over Keir Starmer\u2019s \u201cisland of strangers\u201d<\/a> speech about immigration, which drew criticism that the prime minister was echoing the rightwing politician Enoch Powell.<\/p>\n \u201cI think the use of language was poor,\u201d he says. \u201cPoor choice. And if someone had shown me the speech, I would\u2019ve said, \u2018Take that out\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n On the subject of Gaza<\/a>, Lammy spoke of his \u201cdays of deep frustration, deep sadness\u201d over the war with Israel. He said things were \u201cdesperate for people on the ground, desperate for the hostages in Gaza\u201d, that the world was \u201cdesperate for a ceasefire, for the suffering to come to an end\u201d.<\/p>\n He also said he \u201c100 per cent\u201d wanted to go to Gaza \u201cas soon as I can get in\u201d. Speaking before the government decided to move on to a path to recognise Palestine as an independent state, the foreign secretary described it as a \u201ccard you can only play once\u201d<\/a>.<\/p>\n skip past newsletter promotion<\/a><\/p>\n Our morning email breaks down the key stories of the day, telling you what\u2019s happening and why it matters<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: <\/strong>Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy<\/a>. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy<\/a> and Terms of Service<\/a> apply.<\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n In the interview, the Lammy looked back over his career and his difficult childhood, including the effect of his father \u2013 an alcoholic who was violent towards his mother, and who left for the US.<\/p>\n \u201cMy father didn\u2019t come back. Psychologically that is devastating. There must have been a bit of me that blamed myself. I question whether he did, in fact, love me.\u201d<\/p>\n His father later died of throat cancer without his son seeing him again. Lammy said he could not emotionally handle the idea of it at the time, but added: \u201cI\u2019m quite a forgiving person, my nature is wanting to build bridges, to reach out. It\u2019s why I think I\u2019m not bad at this role.\u201d<\/p>\n He described his sense of purpose as foreign secretary, saying: \u201cThis is the first time in my life where I do not have impostor syndrome. I genuinely have a sense of being in the right place at the right time for this job.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"David Lammy has spoken of his friendship with the US vice-president, JD Vance, as the pair can relate…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":311490,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[12,26],"class_list":{"0":"post-311489","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-news","9":"tag-world"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114958310192838297","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311489","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=311489"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311489\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/311490"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=311489"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=311489"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=311489"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}