This weekend, two of the most ambitious men in politics are further cementing their bromance.
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”.
Both men are shape-shifters who fancy the top job. Vance once likened Trump to Hitler, yet he has positioned himself to inherit the Republican Maga mantle from President Trump, mainly by speaking more extremely than POTUS himself.
Lammy, on the other hand, has built his career by playing to all sides of the Labour Party.
Once a fierce Remainer, Lammy backed David Miliband for the party leadership in 2010, after initially nominating Diane Abbott. He also supported Ken Livingstone for London Mayor in 2010 and nominated Jeremy Corbyn for the Labour leadership in 2015.
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.”
Perhaps in private, behind closed doors at Chevening, the two rising stars may bond over their previous feelings about Trump. Back in 2017, Lammy tweeted that he was “a racist KKK and Nazi sympathiser”, going further in a magazine article that “Trump is not only a woman-hating, neo-Nazi-sympathising sociopath. He is a profound threat to the international order”.
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.
Lammy said he was “reduced to tears” by Hillbilly Elegy, Vance’s bestselling autobiography, and that they have much in common: “We share a similar working-class background, with addiction issues in our family. We’ve written books on that. We’ve talked about that. And we’re both Christians.”
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.
This is a return visit. The Vances hosted the Lammys in Washington DC in March when the two men went to mass together. This weekend, the Anglo-Catholic former choirboy and his Roman Catholic convert “friend” may well kneel again side by side, this time at the altar rail of St Botolph’s church in Chevening’s grounds.
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.
This week Vance claimed, “I really love this country,” yet he has up to now been an outspoken critic of the UK, far beyond the usual niceties of relations between allies.
“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”.
He then criticised the creation of buffer zones to keep protesters away from abortion clinics and identified the UK as one of the countries where he thinks the import of cheap immigrant labour has led productivity to “stagnate”. Then there was his anti-European jibe at the Munich Security Conference – since retracted for Britain and France – that Ukraine’s security could not rely on “some random country that hasn’t fought a war in 30 or 40 years.”
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.
Trump has reduced statecraft to merely what he says and does in his dealings with other “strong men” autocrats and lesser nations, treated as subjects. Starmer and Lammy are going along this imperial way of doing business.
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.
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Some argue that the flattery is paying off. The UK is being hit slightly less hard than others with tariffs. It is claimed that Britain’s restraining influence is evident in the Trump Administration’s approach to Nato, Ukraine and, possibly, Israel. None of these vital matters are resolved as yet. Cheerfully sharing concerns about the state of the world, the only public comment of substance came when Vance reiterated that the US has “no plans” to join the UK in recognising Palestinian statehood.
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.
Both men have been so flexible in their pursuit of power, it is difficult to tell if the Labour politician from North London and the Republican Senator from Ohio really have much in common except for self-promotion.
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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