Like many friends from different orbits, Vice President JD Vance and Britain’s foreign minister, David Lammy, got together on Friday to bond over a hobby — fishing — before sitting down to hash out their differences, in their case, how the United States and Britain should respond to the deepening humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
Mr. Vance, a Republican whose public positions rarely diverge from President Trump’s, acknowledged there was daylight between him and Mr. Lammy, a Labour Party minister under Prime Minister Keir Starmer, starting with Britain’s announcement last week that it would recognize the state of Palestine unless Israel agreed to a cease-fire with Hamas.
“We have no plans to recognize a Palestinian state,” Mr. Vance told reporters as he met Mr. Lammy at the foreign secretary’s grand official country residence, Chevening House, southeast of London. “I don’t know what it would really mean to recognize a Palestinian state, given the lack of a functional government there.”
Mr. Vance said Mr. Trump was sticking to his goal of making sure Hamas is never again able to strike Israeli civilians as it did on Oct. 7, 2023, though he said the president had been moved by the “terrible images” from Gaza and wanted to ease the suffering.
“We may have some disagreements about how to accomplish that goal, and we’ll talk about that today,” said Mr. Vance, who was on the first day of a family vacation in Britain.
Israel’s decision to expand its military campaign in Gaza could lay bare further differences between the United States and Britain. Mr. Vance declined to comment on the announcement, while Mr. Lammy said Britain was concerned it would worsen the humanitarian crisis and put the remainder of the hostages being held by Hamas in grave danger.
“I am hugely concerned, as I think a lot of Israeli people are, about the impact, particularly on the hostages,” Mr. Lammy said.
For all the shadows cast by Gaza, the two men labored to project a portrait of chumminess. Mr. Lammy is playing host to Mr. Vance, his wife, Usha, and their three children for two nights at Chevening, a 17th-century English Palladian-style house that has long served as a retreat for Britain’s chief diplomat.
As they sat down in a gilded drawing room, Mr. Vance said he had caught a few fish — “I don’t want to brag,” he said with a grin — after noting that Mr. Lammy had caught none. (“The one strain on the special relationship,” Mr. Vance said.)
Next week, the vice president and his family will visit the Cotswolds, west of London, before traveling on to Scotland. He is following Mr. Trump, who visited Scotland two weeks ago to dedicate a golf course at one of his resorts. The president also met with Mr. Starmer and the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, with whom he announced a trade deal.
Mr. Trump has been invited to return to Britain for a state visit in September, and Mr. Vance seemed eager not to spoil the mood before that. He avoided the harsh critique he leveled against Britain and Europe earlier this year over issues including free speech and what he views as a lack of political tolerance.
“I’ve raised some criticism and concerns about our friends on this side of the Atlantic,” Mr. Vance said. “Many of the things that I worry most about were happening in the United States from 2020 to 2024.”
Mr. Vance and Mr. Lammy have cultivated a personal relationship that predates their current jobs. In an interview with The New York Times last year, Mr. Lammy said Mr. Vance’s best-selling memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy,” bore parallels to his own story, growing up with a single mother and an absent, alcoholic father in the Tottenham section of London, where race riots convulsed the streets.
Mr. Vance’s book “reduced me to tears,” said Mr. Lammy, whose memoir is titled “Out of the Ashes.” “I said to J.D., ‘Look, we’ve got different politics,” Mr. Lammy recalled in the 2024 interview, “but we’re both quite strong Christians, and we both share quite a tough upbringing.’”
Mr. Vance cast his differences with Mr. Lammy almost as a strength. “We care about this relationship,” he said. “We care about the fact that we’re separated by an ocean and as, I guess as Churchill said, by a common language.”
When the vice president and his family arrive in the Cotswolds, they will find a picture-postcard landscape of rolling hills, sun-kissed fields and bustling market towns, stuffed with cafes, antique shops and gastropubs that cater to a well-heeled London clientele.
For years, Britain’s elite have flocked to the Cotswolds, buying limestone retreats in villages like Naunton and Chipping Norton. With its Hamptons-in-England vibe, it has also begun to attract refugees from the United States. Ellen DeGeneres, the former talk-show host, and her wife, Portia de Rossi, bought a house there last year, which they just put on the market for 22.5 million pounds ($30 million).
Mr. Vance is not likely to cross paths with them. But in many other ways, he sounded like a man who had come home. “I really love this country,” he said.