Uncomfortable truth or outrageous lie? Either way, the British media squirmed over Trump VP pick J.D. Vance’s humorous reflection on Britain, a nuclear power, having such rapidly changing demographics.
Nearly every major British media outlet carried their concerns over Ohio Senator James David (‘J.D.’) Vance’s comments at the National Conservatism Conference in Washington D.C. last week after he was selected by former President Donald Trump to be his running mate on Monday.
In a 20-minute speech at the conference talking about foreign policy, defence, and America’s place in the world, Vance touched on immigration several times and made a joke about Britain’s open borders problem which he suggested would be exacerbated by the new Labour government.
He said, in comments accompanied by laughter and applause:
…by the way I have to beat up on the UK on one additional thing… one of the big dangers in the world of course is nuclear proliferation… what is the first truly Islamist country that will get a nuclear weapons? Maybe it’s Iran, maybe Pakistan already kinda counts, and then we finally decided maybe it’s the UK since Labour just took over. But to my Tory friends I’ve got to say, you guy have got to get a handle on this.
The Guardian, Britain’s main left-wing news outlet, acknowledged the line was made in jest, but stated nevertheless: “Jokes can be provocative, dangerous and offensive, and they reveal a lot about what people think”.
The UK’s new left-wing Labour government installed earlier this month — which despite all its rhetoric on diversity has the highest proportion of white ministers in years — made a statement on Vance through its Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner, who said she didn’t “recognise that characterisation” of the UK.
Labour grandee Alastair Campbell responded to Vance’s remarks by calling him a dangerous clown.
The Conservatives, characteristically, went even further and called Vance’s remarks “actually quite offensive”. This is unsurprising given the open-borders policies of the last Conservative government — for which they were thrown out of office, given their repeated broken promises on the subject — is a very sore point for the Tories. Indeed, the United Kingdom is now experiencing the highest population growth in recorded history because of mass migration.
Ostensibly a Conservative newspaper, the Telegraph suggests Vance’s comments “could complicate Sir Keir Starmer’s efforts to forge ties with an incoming US administration”. Yet this reflection didn’t go so far as to explore the possibility that Starmer’s pick for Foreign Secretary David Lammy previously calling President Trump a “neo-Nazi-sympathising sociopath” and a “tyrant in a toupee” may have already done the damage here.
Although the British media class seemed universally prickled by the suggestion that the United Kingdom, presently in an era of unprecedented mass migration, might be experiencing demographic change, there were a handful happy to see Vance as the pick. Reform UK and Brexit leader Nigel Farage gave his fulsome backing to President Trump, writing Monday night that Vance is a “great pick… he is a top man”.
While the British media hyper-focussed on the one joke at the expense of Vance’s British friends, there was plenty more of interest to be taken from Vance’s National Conservatism conference speech last week from his concern about the Washington orthodoxy on China to democratic issues with mass migration. He said: “The dumbest of all possible foreign policy solutions and answers for our country is that we should allow China make all of our stuff and we should fight a war with China. We should maybe not fight a war with China if we can avoid it, we should also not let China make all of our stuff… the perfect encapsulation of the dumbest way to govern our country.”
On the broken democracies of the West: “The real threat to American democracy is that American voters keep voting for less immigration and our politicians keep rewarding us with more… I had a conversation with an English friend earlier today and one of the things that is very obvious all over the Western world, in Germany, in the UK, in place after place the populations keep on telling their leadership that they want less immigration and their leadership keeps refusing to listen to them. It’s a fundamental broken translation function in our sacred democracy that our elites don’t seem to care about.”
In remarks sure to upset the British media and political class even more, given how hard they strike at the core assumptions and beliefs of the Westminster set, Vance reflected last week: “If non-stop immigration was the way to create wealth and prosperity and lower home prices then London would be doing great. And let me tell you, I was in London last year and it’s not doing so great.”
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