JD Vance hit out at Keir Starmer’s plan to recognise Palestine as he met foreign secretary David Lammy in Kent on Friday for informal talks at the start of a private family holiday in the Cotswolds.
The US vice-president questioned how the prime minister’s historic pledge would be achieved, because of the lack of a functional government in the territory.
He confirmed Washington did not intend to follow the UK, saying the two countries had “disagreements” over how to respond to the crisis in Gaza but shared a common goal to end the war.
Mr Vance also claimed he “loved” Britain despite a number of outspoken attacks in recent months.
On a visit to Chevening, the foreign secretary’s official country retreat in Kent, the Republican revealed the rapport he has built up with the Labour MP.
He heaped praise on Mr Lammy as his “good friend” and said their families enjoy spending time together. The two men are understood to have bonded over their Christian faith.
However, he made clear the divide between the two governments on how to deal with the war in Gaza.
As the pair sat beside each other at the start of the meeting, he was asked by reporters what he thought of the UK’s plans to recognise Palestine.
Mr Vance replied: “Obviously, the United Kingdom is going to make its decision.
“We have no plans to recognise the Palestinian state. I don’t know what it would mean to really recognise a Palestinian state given the lack of functional government there.”
He said both sides wanted to “solve” the crisis in Gaza, but “may have some disagreements about how exactly to accomplish that goal, and we’ll talk about that today”.
“There’s a lot of common objectives here. There is some, I think, disagreement about how exactly to accomplish those common objectives, but look, it’s a tough situation,” he said.
“Of course, we’re not going to know exactly how to solve a very complicated problem.”
Mr Vance visited Chevening at the start of his holiday, and joined the foreign secretary for a spot of carp fishing at the Chevening pond.
“Unfortunately, the one strain on the special relationship is that all of my kids caught fish, but the foreign secretary did not,” the vice-president joked.
“It is great to be here… my wife and I love this area of the UK and we were actually here a couple of years ago,” he said.
He added: “We love this country. Just on a personal note, I have to say that I really have become a good friend, and David has become a good friend of mine, and so it’s great to spend some time here with him… you’ve been a very, very gracious host to me and the whole family.”
Asked about the criticism he has previously directed at the UK over issues like freedom of speech, he claimed his concerns related more widely to “the entire collective West”, although he did warn the UK not to go down a “dark path” of censorship.
In February, Mr Vance claimed that a “backslide away from conscience rights” had “placed the basic liberties of religious Britons” under threat, and attacked the use of laws to enforce buffer zones around abortion clinics.
More recently, he took aim at the UK’s international might. As the UK and France led efforts to secure a peace deal in Ukraine, he questioned the level of security that could be offered by “some random country that hasn’t fought a war in 30 or 40 years”.
After the backlash that followed, in which British politicians and ex-soldiers pointed out that the UK had fought alongside the US in Iraq and Afghanistan, he denied the comments were about the UK or France.
On Friday, Mr Vance said: “I’ve raised concerns about free speech in the United States of America.
“I think the entire collective West, the transatlantic relationship, our Nato allies, certainly the United States under the Biden administration, got a little too comfortable with censoring rather than engaging with a diverse array of opinions.
“So that’s been my view. Obviously, I’ve raised some criticism and concerns about our friends on this side of the Atlantic, but the thing that I say to the people of England, or anybody else, to David, is many of the things that I worry most about were happening in the United States from 2020 to 2024.
“I just don’t want other countries to follow us down what I think is a very dark path under the Biden administration.”
Mr Lammy said: “But, you know, there are areas where there are actually joint concern, we both have a joint concern about outcomes for working people, that is the truth of it,” he said.
“And we have also discussed issues like irregular and illegal migration and how we deal with those issues. So there are commonalities and there are differences and that is the joy of living in democracies like ours.”
