The Apprentice

What a marvellous day. Sure, we had woken up to the news that Washington, in its determination to force Ukraine to the negotiating table, was cutting off supplies of weapons. Donald Trump seems personally offended by the refusal of the Ukrainians to simply give in to Russia. If this doesn’t work, perhaps he’ll start bombing Kyiv himself.

But in Britain the sun was shining and we had found an enemy we could all agree on. Vice President JD Vance, very much the Nick Nack to Trump’s Francisco Scaramanga, had given one of those marvellous interviews in which a “high-IQ” American reveals their shaky knowledge of the world beyond their shores. At a time when the lights looked as though they could go out over Europe, we desperately needed a pile-on, and here was a target.

Explaining that Americans needed “economic upside in the future of Ukraine” — peace in Europe not being enough of an economic upside in itself — the vice president told Fox News: “That 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.”

Who could he mean? The only countries offering anything close to those numbers were France and, well, Britain. Given that several hundred British soldiers had died in US-led wars this century, the outrage was predictable. “Clown!” said former Tory minister and Royal Marine Johnny Mercer. “Utterly disgraceful!” said Admiral Lord West, a man whom defence correspondents have on speed dial.

To be a Trump-level provocateur, you need to completely commit to the shamelessness

What was interesting was the breadth of the attacks. Even Nigel Farage, careful up to this point not to run up against the big names in America, joined in: “JD Vance is wrong,” he said. “Wrong, wrong, wrong.” If he keeps on like this, he’ll put his future as a Fox News commentator in jeopardy. Clearly the Reform leader felt that a line had been crossed.

Though possibly not on purpose. Vance is often happy to outrage — when he went into US politics, the Telegraph comment desk missed out on recruiting a spicy blogger — but when he woke on Tuesday morning, he issued a hasty rebuttal.

It was, he tweeted, “absurdly dishonest” to suggest that he was talking about Britain or France. So who did he mean? Sadly, when this question landed, he was called away from his phone, leaving him unable to explain. All we got was this cryptic line: “There are many countries who are volunteering (privately or publicly) support who have neither the battlefield experience nor the military equipment to do anything meaningful.”

These days, that actually could have been a description of the British Army, but the “privately” was a nice touch, implying as it did that there was some secret third nation offering 20,000 troops to Ukraine, that he knows about but you don’t, because they go to a different United Nations.

We should take him at his word and accept that he didn’t mean Britain or France. Neither, let’s pretend, did he mean any of the 30 members of NATO, who all sent troops to Afghanistan. Let’s face it, he didn’t know where he meant. Like his audience, he knows roughly where Germany is, but after that he gets a bit hazy. Is Ruritania in Keir Starmer’s Coalition of the Willing? Probably, and their army is rubbish — all swords and pikes. As for Sokovia, they’re a well-known hiding place for anti-Captain America elements.

In London there was more reaction. The prime minister’s statement was typically careful, praising British forces without engaging with the substance of Vance’s words. If you didn’t want to upset the vice president, but didn’t want to defend him, this was the obvious path to take. Frankly, you’d have to try pretty hard to misjudge the response to this one.

Which brings us — of course — to Kemi Badenoch. Her own defence spokesman had already called the vice president “deeply disrespectful”. Was that the Conservative line? “I know JD Vance quite well,” she told GB News, carefully associating herself with one of the world’s more disliked men. “I’ve looked at the comments. I don’t think he actually said that.” Yes, the Tory leader was not simply going to defend the vice president, she was going to get into a discussion about which weakling countries he might have been talking about. The channel, enterprisingly, joined in. Did he mean France? At which point Badenoch sadly ended the interview.

What makes Vance a much more enjoyable subject for this kind of thing is that he reads and engages with it. The past few weeks have seen the actual vice president of the United States, a man a heartbeat away from controlling the world’s largest nuclear arsenal, get into a Twitter spat with Rory Stewart, a British podcast host. Being rude about Trump has always felt somewhat futile, because he was unlikely to see it. But the president’s minions are much more easily goaded.

Which is why, fundamentally, Vance doesn’t have what it takes to match his boss. To be a Trump-level provocateur, you need to completely commit to the shamelessness. The president could make a speech announcing that Britain took no part in World War 2, ignore all protests, and then, when challenged, simply deny he ever said it. That’s how you do this kind of thing. If you want to be king, JD, you need to never apologise, and never explain.