JD Vance returned to Washington DC on Sunday, marking the end of his ten-day private holiday in Britain. The US vice president spent time in Kent, the Cotswolds and Ayrshire, Scotland, rounding off a stay that has highlighted the growing ambivalence present within the ‘special relationship’ enjoyed by both nations.
Mr Vance and his family began their holidays in Chevening, Kent – squeezing into Foreign Secretary David Lammy’s 115-room 17th century government manor. Both men fished together and bonded over their respective childhood challenges and strong Christian faiths, and Mr Vance described Mr Lammy as a “very, very gracious host”.
Next, Mr Vance travelled to the Cotswolds where he stayed in a property reportedly costing £8,000 a week, from which he paid visits to the US soldiers stationed at RAF Fairford and to Henry VIII’s Hampton Court Palace, which was cordoned off to the public for that day.
Finally, the family headed to Scotland, where they golfed at President Trump’s Turnberry resort.
Some residents of the Cotswolds reacted warmly to JD Vance’s arrival, describing it as a “great honour” to host such an important figure. The heightened police presence, vastly greater than normal for a neighbourhood that boasts residents such as David Cameron and Brad Pitt, was seen by many as an acceptable price for this.
However, coverage of the visit has largely centred around the protests that followed him across the nation. A pro-Palestine demonstration greeted the vice president at his Scottish estate; while the Cotswolds abounded with political messages ranging from the jovial, like the ‘JD Van’ which displayed the popular photoshopped image of a bald Mr Vance; to the scathing, with the US government accused of “facilitating genocide” and constituting “a sort of terrorist organization” in the Middle East.
The staff of the Oxfordshire-based Bull Pub also refused to serve Mr Vance, forcing him to make alternative arrangements during his stay.
Political activism such as this has been praised by Brits (and the many Americans living in the Cotswolds) as a bulwark against the recent attacks on free speech by the Trump Administration.
In June, a Norwegian student claimed that he was denied entry into the United States because authorities found the same image of a bald Mr Vance used by protesters on his phone. Reuters estimates that between 200 and 300 student visas have now been revoked due to pro-Palestinian activity under President Trump’s ‘ideological-deportation policy’.
This week, British social media ignited with stories that American security forces were requesting the information of each resident in the Cotswolds – although fact-checkers deny this claim.
Mr Vance, like President Trump, has greatly varied in tone when discussing the UK. Before departing, he labelled Britain “a beautiful country”, before denying that he meant any disrespect in calling the UK “some random country that hasn’t gone to war in 30 years” when opposing the British peace plan for Ukraine earlier this year.
Historically, Mr Vance has seldom held back when discussing Britain – calling it an “Islamist” country last July and claiming Starmer was “infringing on free speech” during his visit to the Oval Office in February. Nonetheless, he proudly claims British ancestry: referring to himself as a “Scots-Irish hillbilly”, suggesting that the UK will continue to be viewed fondly going forward.
The British right is now scrambling to associate itself with its American counterpart, which it sees as a model for future success. Mr Vance met with Reform UK leader Nigel Farage, Conservative Shadow Lord Chancellor Robert Jenrick, key Conservative academic James Orr, and television personality Thomas Skinner while in the Cotswolds. David Cameron and George Osborne also played key roles in arranging accommodations for the Vance family, signalling an overall alignment of the British right behind the more populist tenets of American national conservatism.
Meanwhile, British public opinion towards the United States is now more polarised than ever before. For the first time, YouGov polling has revealed that over one in five Brits feel that the US is either unfriendly or actively hostile towards the UK and Europe, up from just 12% when President Trump took office.
Ideological standing is now a key determinant of this perception, since Labour voters are the least likely to classify the Anglo-American ‘special relationship’ as friendly or characterised by friendly rivalry (51%), while Reform UK voters are the most likely (69%). As Mr Vance and others continue to export their ideology abroad, this divergence is only likely to grow.
Mr Vance will return to the UK on September 17th, alongside President Trump, and will likely meet greater demonstrations when he does – indicating that the ‘special relationship’, coined by Winston Churchill in 1946, has entered a new era of turbulence.
Mr Vance has now joined European leaders, including Keir Starmer, in Washington to discuss a peace plan for Ukraine. Given the growing antipathy between the US and Europe, Prime Minister Starmer, who has previously rejected “the idea that we must choose between our allies” may face an increasingly difficult task to uphold the UK’s position as a bridge between the US and Europe.
