Republican vice presidential hopeful JD Vance introduced himself to US voters as a defender of “forgotten” workers, as Foreign Secretary David Lammy played up their shared troubled backgrounds.
Mr Lammy said he got on well with Mr Vance, despite the Ohio senator claiming that Labour-run Britain was now the first “Islamist” country with nuclear weapons, and vowed to work with whoever is elected by US voters in November after he previously called Donald Trump a “tyrant in a toupée”.
The former president revealed Mr Vance as his running mate this week and the senator formally accepted his nomination at the Republican National Convention (RNC) in Milwaukee on Wednesday night with a speech that lent heavily on his rags-to-riches rise, as documented in the best-selling memoir Hillbilly Elegy, which Mr Lammy has said reduced him to tears.
After he was introduced by his Indian-American lawyer wife Usha, Mr Vance told cheering delegates: “In small towns like mine in Ohio, or next door in Pennsylvania, or in Michigan, in states all across our country, jobs were sent overseas and children were sent to war.
“To the people of Middletown, Ohio, and all the forgotten communities in Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Ohio, and every corner of our nation, I promise you this: I will be a vice president who never forgets where he came from.”
The former venture capitalist, who made millions in Silicon Valley after serving in the Marines and attending Yale Law School, added: “We’ll commit to the working man.”
At 39, Mr Vance is one of the youngest VP picks yet and his relative youth is in contrast to the 78-year-old Mr Trump — who again appeared in Milwaukee with his ear in a bandage after it was grazed by a would-be assassin’s bullet.
The senator accused “career politicians” such as Joe Biden, 81, of destroying communities like his with their trade policies and wars — although the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq were instigated by the Republican George W Bush.
The Democrats hit back by accusing Mr Vance of being in the pocket of big donors and a yes man to Mr Trump, and zeroed in on his hardline opposition to abortion rights as making him out of step with women and centrist voters.
Mr Vance has morphed from being an outspoken critic to ardent defender of Mr Trump, and the speech was a roll call of Trumpian grievances ranging from Chinese imports to a warning that US allies will no longer get “free rides” in defence. The senator, who opposes further US aid to Ukraine and defended Mr Trump’s attempts to overturn his 2020 election loss, said: “President Trump’s vision is so simple and yet so powerful.”
Despite their widely different political positions, Mr Lammy told Sky News that he was on friendly terms with Mr Vance, both having grown up in broken families that knew drug addiction and poverty. “And now I’ve met him on a few occasions and we have been able to find common ground and get on,” the Tottenham MP said.
He added of his own past rhetoric: “You are going to struggle to find any politician who didn’t have things to say about Donald Trump back in the day.”
