Vance, UK foreign secretary will meet before US vice president's vacation in the English countryside

LONDON (AP) — U.S. Vice President JD Vance is expected to meet with U.K. Foreign Secretary David Lammy on Friday at a stately home south of London before heading off on a family vacation in the the Cotswolds, a trendy retreat in the English countryside.

Vance and Lammy, who come from opposite ends of the political spectrum but have made a personal connection through their hardscrabble childhoods and Christian faith, will hold talks at the foreign secretary’s official country residence, known as Chevening.

The meeting comes as the United Kingdom tries to come to favorable terms for steel and aluminum exports to the U.S. as the two sides work out details of a broader trade deal announced at the end of June. Russia's invasion of Ukraine and the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza are also likely to be on the agenda amid debates between Washington and London about the best way to end those conflicts.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said Thursday that he hoped to meet with U.S. President Donald Trump next week. Those comments came a day before Trump’s deadline for Moscow to show progress in ending the nearly 3½-year war in Ukraine.

While Trump has focused on bilateral talks with Putin, U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer and other European leaders have stressed that Ukraine must be part of any negotiations on ending the war.

The U.S. and Britain, which have historically close ties known as “the special relationship,” have also disagreed on their approach to ending the war in Gaza.

Starmer said last week that the U.K. would recognize a Palestinian state in September unless Israel takes steps to end the humanitarian crisis in Gaza and commits to a “long-term sustainable peace.” The U.S. has said that such recognition would be counterproductive because it rewards Hamas militants for the attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.

Lammy and Vance will meet at Chevening, an almost 400-year-old mansion surrounded by 3,000 acres (about 1,200 hectares) of gardens, lawns and woodland in the county of Kent, southeast of London. The estate was given to the nation by the 7th Earl Stanhope in 1967 and is now the official country residence of the U.K. foreign secretary.

While Lammy is a member of the left-leaning Labour Party and Vance is a conservative Republican who supports Trump’s “America First” agenda, the two men have bonded in recent months.

Lammy told the Guardian newspaper that the two men can relate over their “dysfunctional” working class childhoods and that he considers Vance a “friend.”

Lammy attended a Catholic Mass at the Vance home in Washington earlier this year, and the two men met again at the U.S. Embassy in Rome when he and Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner attended the inauguration of Pope Leo XIV in May.

“I had this great sense that JD completely relates to me and he completely relates to Angela,” Lammy told the Guardian. “So it was a wonderful hour and a half.”

After spending a few days at Chevening, Vance and his family will head to the Cotswolds, an area that has become popular with wealthy American tourists because of its quaint villages, stone cottages and rural countryside that hark back to old England.

A host of celebrities descended on the area two weeks ago for the wedding of Eve Jobs, the daughter of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, and Harry Charles, a member of the British equestrian team at last summer’s Olympic Games in Paris.

The Cotswolds cover about 800 square miles (2,000 square kilometers) and parts of five counties in the west of England. Vance and his family have reportedly rented a house in the village of Charlbury, 12 miles west of Oxford, according to British media outlets.

“That area is very fashionable,” Plum Sykes, a socialite and journalist, told London-based newspaper The Times.

“If you wanted to be in the super-hot, super-social Cotswolds, that’s where you’d go,” she said. “There’s been this mass exodus from America to the Cotswolds. Americans just cannot get over the charm. Then power and money attract power and money.”