J.D. Vance is just about the least popular conservative in Britain right now. The US Vice President’s treatment of Volodymyr Zelensky, and more recent leaked text messages discussing strikes on Yemen, have left Vance mired in scandal. Even in America, home of the MAGA movement, he is among the most disliked veeps in history, at least at this early stage in his term.
So it’s no wonder that last week Vance tried to move back onto his home turf and the issues for which he first became famous as a writer: the impact of globalisation on the American working class. In a room full of tech entrepreneurs, his championship of red-state, Main Street conservatism was clearly a hard sell. But look beyond the early political disasters of the second Trump administration, and it’s clear that Vance was offering something sorely lacking on both sides of the Atlantic: an economic worldview that is both reformist and coherent.
The Vice President and author of Hillbilly Elegy embraces a vision that seeks to strengthen American productivity, but with the firm objective of bringing prosperity to American workers.
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