{"id":328139,"date":"2025-08-08T14:58:20","date_gmt":"2025-08-08T14:58:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/328139\/"},"modified":"2025-08-08T14:58:20","modified_gmt":"2025-08-08T14:58:20","slug":"j-d-vance-begins-u-k-visit-amid-high-transatlantic-tension","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/328139\/","title":{"rendered":"J.D. Vance Begins U.K. Visit Amid High Transatlantic Tension"},"content":{"rendered":"

Vice President J.D. Vance will meet<\/a> with British Foreign Secretary David Lammy at his country residence in the U.K. at a time of heightened transatlantic tensions. <\/p>\n

The meeting comes ahead of a private family holiday that will see Vance, his wife Usha, and their three children stay at the Grade 1 listed mansion Chevening, before heading to the Cotswolds, which has been dubbed the \u201cHamptons of England.\u201d<\/p>\n

The bilateral meeting on Friday lacks a formal agenda, officials said, but is likely to cover trade and the Gaza and Ukraine crises. <\/p>\n

Prime Minister Keir Starmer last week announced<\/a> that the U.K. would recognize a Palestinian state in September unless Israel agrees to a ceasefire <\/strong>and addresses the \u201cintolerable\u201d situation on the ground in Gaza. Lammy himself has said he is \u201cappalled and sickened<\/a>\u201d by the suffering of Palestinians in Gaza, and accused Israel of \u201cdrip feeding<\/a>\u201d aid to the Strip.<\/p>\n

The White House has said that recognizing a Palestinian state would amount to \u201crewarding Hamas.\u201d <\/p>\n

An upcoming summit<\/a> between President Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin is also expected to be on the agenda. The U.K. and other European nations fear that a meeting would see Putin attempt to force Ukraine to unfavorable terms with President Volodymyr Zelensky not at the table. <\/p>\n

Exclusive:<\/strong> The Secret White House Backchannel That Paved the Way For Trump\u2019s Summit With Putin<\/a><\/p>\n

But the Labour government has cultivated strong <\/strong>ties with the White House that may help it press its position. The U.K. in May became the first country to strike a trade deal<\/a> with the U.S.<\/p>\n

The British Foreign Secretary has wooed Vance, describing him <\/a>as a friend, and drawn a number of parallels between their working-class childhoods with a single mother and absent father. <\/p>\n

Lammy once said that Vance\u2019s memoir reduced him to tears:\u201cI said to JD: \u2018Look, we\u2019ve got different politics, but we\u2019re both quite strong Christians and we both share quite a tough upbringing\u2019.\u201d <\/p>\n

That approach marks a different tone to when Lammy, as a backbench Member of Parliament years earlier, referred to Trump<\/a> as a \u201cfar right extremist\u201d and a \u201cneo-Nazi.\u201d But the Foreign Secretary had reportedly<\/a> <\/strong>worked to cultivate ties with MAGA Republicans even before the 2024 U.S. election.<\/p>\n

The choice of the U.K. as a holiday will also bring renewed scrutiny to Vance\u2019s past remarks about the country and its government.<\/p>\n

Vance once said<\/a> that the U.K. could become the first \u201ctruly Islamist country that will get a nuclear weapon\u201d under the Labour Party. He has also claimed that freedom of speech is being undermined in the U.K., referencing an incident from 2022 in which a man was convicted after breaching<\/a> a safe zone outside an abortion clinic.<\/p>\n

The Vance-Lammy meeting comes weeks after Trump traveled to Scotland to visit his golf courses in a trip that included sit-downs with Starmer and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. Trump will return to the U.K. next month for an unprecedented second state visit<\/a>, with King Charles hosting Trump and his wife Melania at Windsor Castle. <\/p>\n

Trade unions, pro-Palestinian demonstrators, and climate activists have warned that they will protest Vance\u2019s U.K. trip. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Vice President J.D. Vance will meet with British Foreign Secretary David Lammy at his country residence in the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":328140,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[748,393,4884,12,28423,1144,712,16,15,1764],"class_list":{"0":"post-328139","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uk","8":"category-united-kingdom","9":"tag-britain","10":"tag-england","11":"tag-great-britain","12":"tag-news","13":"tag-news-desk","14":"tag-northern-ireland","15":"tag-scotland","16":"tag-uk","17":"tag-united-kingdom","18":"tag-wales"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114993738861925874","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/328139","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=328139"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/328139\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/328140"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=328139"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=328139"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=328139"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}