The Foreign Secretary, David Lammy, is hosting the US Vice President JD Vance and his family at Chevening, his grace and favour mansion in Kent. The high-level three-night sleepover is the prelude to the Vances’ much-publicised “Cotswolds Vacation”.
Lammy, on the other hand, has built his career by playing to all sides of the Labour Party.
Ever canny, he next joined the campaign for Keir Starmer and Angela Rayner to take over and positioned himself well to become Foreign Secretary. No wonder he boasted to The Times last year: “At every single stage I have been underestimated. But I am content with who I am. And I’ve got quite strong survival instincts.”
A heart-to-heart along these old lines seems unlikely. Once Trump returned to power and brought JD with him, Lammy, and his boss Starmer, have taken it as their duty to suck up to them.
Both men certainly looked comfortable in the plush drawing room of the country mansion on Friday. “Not bad,” muttered JD, looking around. “Welcome to my home here,” Lammy purred proudly.
As for his current “relationship” with the actual President, Lammy is still savouring the great diplomatic coup of being offered a second helping of chicken and fries at a Trump Tower dinner by its “gracious” and most famous resident. Lammy will be on hand for Trump’s “unprecedented” second state visit to this country in a few weeks. In another unprecedented innovation, the VP is expected to tag along too, confirming his position as Trump’s sidekick and ideological enforcer.
“Since Labour just took over” he speculated in July 2024 that the UK may be “the first truly Islamist country that will get a nuclear weapon”. He later complained of “a backslide” in freedom of speech here impacting on “American technology companies and, by extension, American citizens”, as well as on “the basic liberties of religious Britons in particular in the crosshairs”.
All that was forgotten as Lammy played the diplomatic host. As President Zelensky found out to his cost in the winter, it is unwise to raise any questions in the Court of King Donald.
It is part of the Monarch’s job to put up VIP political guests, not ministers. I cannot recall an equivalent of the Vances’ Chevening weekend during previous UK governments. Residences have been used for official visits before but not over several days for high-profile holidays along with spouses and children. This Government is following Trump’s lead, removing the normal boundaries between the professional and the personal.
square SARAH BAXTER JD Vance has a choice: be Trump’s puppet president or become irrelevant
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What is certain is that Vance and Lammy are bigging themselves up. But personal self-aggrandisement, even with American-style informality, is not the same as policymaking. Not that the “good friends” will care if they can go on “working together”, perhaps in even more senior roles.
The tragedy of our times is that the mutual back-slapping of these strutting support acts of flexible principles may help their future ambitions to rise even further in the leadership of their two countries.
Adam Boulton presents ‘Sunday Morning’ on Times Radio
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