Donald Trump has named Ohio's Senator J.D. Vance as his pick for vice-president, saying the former venture capitalist and one-time "Never Trump" Republican is "best suited" to the role.
The UK may disagree. Vance has described Britain under the new Labour government as the world's first "truly Islamist country" with nuclear weapons – fuelling fears that the UK's special relationship with the US may "decline sharply" if Trump returns to power, said the Daily Mail. The former president "sent a clear message to Britain" with this VP pick.
What did the commentators say? Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner said she "doesn't recognise" Vance's characterisation of the UK. "He's said quite a lot of fruity things in the past," she told ITV's "Good Morning Britain". But the US is a "key ally of ours", and should Trump and Vance prove victorious, "we'll work together constructively".Â
Labour is "scrabbling to cement a better relationship with the Republicans", said The Telegraph. David Lammy, now foreign secretary, has been meeting senior Republicans for months to smooth relations between Labour and the GOP, which is in "pole position" to be voted into power in the US in November.Â
Having previously called Trump a "woman-hating, neo-Nazi-sympathising sociopath" and a "profound threat", Lammy has since tempered his remarks. "It doesn't matter who is in Number 10, you work with the United States," he said. After meeting Vance in May, Lammy described him as a "friend" and praised "Hillbilly Elegy", the senator's bestselling book about growing up in poverty-stricken Appalachia.
What next? An increasingly tense world needs the special relationship "more than ever", said Jane D. Hartley, the US ambassador to the UK, in The Times in January. The two militaries "underpin global security and defend democracy around the world".Â
Amid spiralling violence in the Middle East, tensions with China, Russia and Iran, and issues such as AI safety and the climate crisis, maintaining the alliance is "vital".
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