Vance Says Britain Has Been Failed by Its Leadership
US Vice-President JD Vance said Britain has been “failed by its leadership for a long time”, telling an interviewer there is something “very broken about British politics” and that he hopes the next prime minister delivers structural change. The intervention lands a fortnight before Andy Burnham is expected to enter Downing Street — and days after officials in the same administration privately warned him against appointing Ed Miliband as chancellor.
Taken together, the week’s signals from Washington amount to an unusually open American stake in the shape of the next British government: private briefing against a chancellor candidate, now a vice-presidential verdict on the country’s political class delivered on the record. For Burnham the message cuts both ways — an offer of support for “change” and an implied warning about what Washington considers failure, from an administration his party’s left distrusts. The remarks will play very differently in Reform’s hands than in Labour’s. Watch whether Burnham responds in tomorrow’s speech, and how the White House handles its first contacts with the new government.