JD Vance to Meet UK Foreign Secretary as He Arrives for Holiday in England

U.S. Vice President JD Vance will meet with British Foreign Secretary David Lammy in London on Friday before beginning a family vacation in the English countryside.

In a statement to the BBC on Aug. 7, the White House said that “the vice president and foreign secretary will discuss a variety of topics pertaining to the US-UK relationship.”

The bilateral meeting on Friday lacks a formal agenda, officials said.

Speaking at Chevening House, Kent, where the vice president is staying, Vance raised free speech concerns.

“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,” said Vance.

“Obviously, I’ve raised some criticism because concerns about our friends on this side of the Atlantic, but the thing that I’d say to the people of England, or anybody else to David [Lammy], 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 was a very dark path under the Biden administration.”

Vance’s visit comes shortly after President Donald Trump traveled to Scotland for a visit that included meetings with Starmer and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.

After months of negotiation, Trump said on July 27 in Turnberry, Scotland, that he had reached a trade deal with the European Union.

The deal between the European Commission and the United States was struck days before the Aug. 1 deadline, after which nearly all EU imports would have been hit with 30 percent levies.

The 27-member bloc will buy $750 billion worth of energy from the United States, and tariffs on EU imports, including automobiles, will be set to 15 percent.

Trump had already unveiled a trade deal with the UK on May 8, the first since announcing his sweeping tariff plans on April 2

Trump is also scheduled for a full state visit to the United Kingdom in September and will be hosted by King Charles III at Windsor Castle, according to a statement issued by the palace.

Vance’s first visit to the UK comes after his sharp criticism of the country’s free speech record.

Vance told the Munich Security Conference in February of his concerns over freedom of expression in the UK, raising the case of Adam Smith-Connor, a United States citizen and Army veteran convicted of breaching a buffer zone by praying silently in partial view of an abortion clinic in Bournemouth in 2022.

Smith-Connor was holding a vigil for his unborn son, who had been aborted 22 years ago. He was given a two-year conditional discharge and ordered to pay more than £9,000 in court costs and victim surcharges.

Referring to “the backslide away from conscience rights,” which has “placed the basic liberties of religious Britons, in particular, in the crosshairs,” the vice president said in February that in “Britain, and across Europe, free speech, I fear, is in retreat.”

Two weeks after his Munich speech, during UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s White House visit, Vance raised the issue during a press conference with Starmer, saying there have been “infringements on free speech that actually affect not just the British,” but also “American technology companies and, by extension, American citizens.”

In response, Starmer said, “We’ve had free speech for a very, very long time in the United Kingdom and it will last for a very, very long time.”

Rachel Roberts and Reuters contributed to this report.