US vice-president JD Vance and his family fly to the UK for their summer holiday today, starting with a trip to see David Lammy at Chevening, the Foreign Secretary’s grace-and-favour pile in Kent.

The visit, expected to last three nights, promises to be a classic of the political odd-couple genre. We are told that Vance and Lammy have struck up an unlikely friendship rooted in their difficult childhoods and shared Christian faith.

When Vance hosted Lammy and his wife, Nicola, earlier this year, they went to Mass together. It has been reported that they will pray together this time, too – one up on those other great transatlantic pals, George W Bush and Tony Blair, for whom joint communion was a step too far.

From the outside, however, Lammy and Vance could hardly be more different.

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