![\"Chevening](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/\/9ac13da3-3b0b-4be2-a697-abc1c1bfadc6.jpg\")
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Vance will stay at Chevening for three nights<\/p>\n
THOMAS IMO\/PHOTOTHEK\/GETTY IMAGES<\/p>\n
The pair will hold a formal bilateral meeting before being joined by their respective partners. Vance is expected to stay at Chevening for up to three nights in total.<\/p>\n
The stay will be seen as a diplomatic coup for Lammy, who has prioritised building a personal rapport with Vance despite their political differences<\/a>.<\/p>\n The two men first met before Vance was picked as President Trump\u2019s running mate and Labour was in opposition as Sir Keir Starmer\u2019s team tried to build bridges with a potential Republican administration. <\/p>\n In a promotional video to promote the trip Lammy said he was \u201cmeeting senior White House officials and meeting friends\u201d before being filmed embracing and shaking hands with Vance.<\/p>\n On paper, the pair are not natural bedfellows. Vance has championed an America First foreign policy and described Britain under Labour as \u201cmaybe\u201d the first \u201ctruly Islamist\u201d country with a nuclear weapon<\/a>. He also attacked the UK for undermining freedom of speech and placing the \u201cbasic liberties of religious Britons in the crosshairs\u201d.<\/p>\n \u2022 From Chequers to Chevening: grace-and-favour homes and who\u2019s in them<\/b><\/a><\/p>\n However, the two men are said to have bonded over their shared experience of growing up in poverty and their Christian faith. <\/p>\n Speaking about their friendship previously, Lammy said: \u201cLet me just say on JD Vance that I\u2019ve met him now on several occasions. We share a similar working-class background, with addiction issues in our family. We\u2019ve written books on that. We\u2019ve talked about that. And we\u2019re both Christians, so I think I can find common ground with JD Vance.\u201d<\/p>\n Vance is reported to have rented a discreet period property near Charlbury<\/p>\n ALAMY<\/p>\n In March, Vance invited Lammy and his family to his Washington residence for several hours. Lammy joined Vance, who is a Catholic, for Mass in his home. <\/p>\n Speaking to The Guardian last week<\/a> about their friendship, Lammy recalled socialising with the Republican alongside Angela Rayner at the inauguration of Pope Leo<\/a>: \u201cI don\u2019t think JD and Angela will mind me saying that they were having a couple of drinks.\u201d<\/p>\n The three of them were \u201cnot just working-class politicians, but people with dysfunctional childhoods\u201d, Lammy said. \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<\/p>\n \u2022 Eric Trump: David ammy\u2019s comments won\u2019t stop special relationship<\/b><\/a><\/p>\n While Vance\u2019s visit to the UK is officially a private trip for his holidays, he is expected to hold several political meetings. He is thought to be hoping to meet Kemi Badenoch, the Conservative leader, with whom he has also built a friendship after meeting in Washington at the end of last year. Nigel Farage this week said only, \u201cWe\u2019ll have to see,\u201d when asked whether he would meet Vance.<\/p>\n Vance is a close friend of James Orr<\/a>, the Cambridge professor, and Usha Vance spent a year at Cambridge studying. The couple were in London before the 2024 presidential election when they were given a tour of the British Museum by George Osborne, its chairman.<\/p>\n Orr said Vance has a love of Britain. \u201cI\u2019ve always had the same response to [people asking], \u2018Why is he so mean about Europe? Why does he seem to hate us Brits so much?\u2019 It\u2019s the reverse. He\u2019s critical of European leadership and the technocratic elite not because he hates Europe but precisely because he loves it.\u201d<\/p>\n JD and Usha Vance with President Macron and his wife, Brigitte, on a trip to Paris in February<\/p>\n ANTOINE GYORI\/GETTY IMAGES<\/p>\n After his Chevening stay, Vance will head for the second leg of his holiday in the Cotswolds. He is reported to have chosen a discreet period property near Charlbury, around 12 miles northwest of Oxford<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cJD Vance has rented this house in Charlbury. It\u2019s very pretty, very bucolic, not miles away from civilisation, not deepest darkest Cotswolds,\u201d Plum Sykes, a socialite and journalist who lives in the Cotswolds, previously told The Times<\/a>.<\/p>\n![\"Ye](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/\/77bf6747-91b3-4b41-a4ca-0ac564c3cbf0.jpg\")
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