JD Vance has launched a fresh attack on European free speech after angering veterans in Britain. The Vice President of the United States claimed Europe is at risk of “civilizational suicide” during an interview on Fox News’s Ingraham Angle show. Mr Vance also said “too many countries” are “unable or unwilling” to control their borders, claiming Europeans’ free speech is being limited amid protests against “things like the border invasion” which helped get US President Donald Trump elected.
He said: “Yes, the Europeans annoy me sometimes and yes, I disagree with them on certain issues, but we have to remember that is the cradle of western civilization, the entire idea of Christian civilization that led to the founding of the United States of America – that was formed in Europe. Europe is at risk, I think, of engaging in civilizational suicide. You see them starting to limit the free speech of their own citizens.
“If you have a country like Germany, where you have another few million immigrants come in from countries that are totally, culturally incompatible with Germany, then it doesn’t matter what I think about Europe. Germany will have killed itself, and I hope they don’t do that because I love Germany and I want Germany to thrive.”
The Vice President previously struck a nerve with the UK and France after arguing that a US-Ukraine critical minerals deal would be a more practical deterrent against Russian President Vladimir Putin than a peacekeeping force for post-war Ukraine which included “some random country”. The UK and France have both signalled a willingness to take a leading part in such a force.
In another interview with Fox News, he said the economic pact with Kyiv sought by Mr Trump “is a way better security guarantee than 20,000 troops from some random country that hasn’t fought a war in 30 or 40 years”.
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The Republican vice president did not mention any particular country in his comments about a potential peacekeeping mission, but the “random country” comment was seen by some in the UK and France as a slight which ignored both countries’ partnership with the US military in conflicts over the past 25 years.
Reform UK leader Nigel Farage told GB News that “JD Vance is wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong”. Patrick Bury, a former British Army officer and warfare expert at the University of Bath, said Mr Vance’s comments had caused pain to veterans.
Liberal Democrat defence spokeswoman Helen Maguire, a former Royal Military Police officer who served in Iraq, called for the UK ambassador in Washington to ask Mr Vance to apologise.
She said: “JD Vance is erasing from history the hundreds of British troops who gave their lives in Iraq and Afghanistan.”
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer praised the hundreds of British troops who died fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq “alongside our allies”, in an apparent rebuke of Mr Vance, who took to social media to try to head off criticism by noting he didn’t name any countries in the TV interview.
Mr Vance has previously felt forced to defend claims about free speech. In remarks made in the Oval Office during a visit to the US by Sir Keir he said there have been “infringements” on free speech affecting not just the UK. The Prime Minister shot back that the UK has had free speech for “a very, very long time” and it would last for a “very, very long time”.
Mr Trump’s number two had previously upended a security conference in Munich in February. He claimed the erosion of free speech posed a greater threat to Britain than Vladimir Putin’s Russia or Xi Jinping’s China.
The Vice President’s latest rant about free speech in Europe comes after the Yale Law School graduate and his wife, Usha Vance, were jeered at a classical music concert at the Kennedy Center in Washington DC. Mrs Vance is the first Asian American Second Lady.