Vance has previously described Britain under Labour as the first “truly Islamist” country with a nuclear weapon.
Lammy told BBC Breakfast: “Let me just say on JD Vance that I’ve met him now on several occasions, 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 so I think I can find common ground with JD Vance.”
[…]
Expanding on his views on Vance on BBC Radio 4, Lammy said he had started to discuss the US view on global defence at the security conference in Munich in February.“Yes, he has had strong things to say about European defences, and he has had a point of view about Ukraine,” Lammy said. “That’s why I’ve been engaged with JD Vance for many, many months.”
The foreign secretary once called Donald Trump a “neo-Nazi sociopath” and “a tyrant in a toupee”, but has distanced himself from those comments as the US presidential election has approached.
More recently Lammy has spoken at conservative events in the US, telling the Hudson Institute in May that he “gets the agenda that drives ‘America first’”.
Sure, if he’s elected then Vance is someone Lammy will likely have to work with. He didn’t have to announce that he had so much in common with an ethnonationalist before he’s even been elected though.