In an interview with The Sunday Times, US Vice President JD Vance declared that Britain has been ‘failed by its leadership for a long time’ and that its political system is ‘very broken’, pointing to the imminent arrival of the country’s seventh prime minister in a decade. Vance argued that the rapid turnover of governments—six prime ministers in a handful of years—demonstrates a deep public appetite for ‘significant structural change’ and that the next leader must ‘figure out how to get Britain back on track’.

The vice president indicated tentative support for Andy Burnham, the former mayor of Greater Manchester who is the only declared candidate and widely expected to succeed Keir Starmer as Labour leader and prime minister. While conceding he does not know much about Burnham, Vance stated that ‘whoever the prime minister is, we’re going to work with them and work with them as successfully as we can’. He described Britain as the country that feels most culturally familiar to him outside the United States and emphasised the enduring value of the US–UK alliance.

Starmer announced his resignation last month after two years in office. The leadership contest, for which nominations open on 9 July, is viewed by commentators in London as a formality given Burnham’s unopposed candidacy. US President Donald Trump, reacting to Starmer’s departure, called him a ‘lovely man’ but said he had failed on immigration and energy policy; Trump has also labelled Burnham ‘extremely liberal’ and suggested he would oppose further North Sea oil and gas development—an area where Washington has pressed for expansion.

Vance’s remarks arrive against a backdrop of friction between the US and European allies on multiple fronts, including the administration’s bid to acquire Greenland, the US-led campaign against Iran, and what Washington perceives as insufficient NATO burden-sharing in securing the Strait of Hormuz. The vice president’s own intervention at the Munich Security Conference, where he accused European governments of opening the ‘floodgates’ to migrants, and subsequent comments by Secretary of State Marco Rubio on ‘two-tier policing’ in Britain, have drawn rebuke from Downing Street, which insisted that politics should bring people together even in terrible circumstances.

Vance attempted to frame these tensions as expressions of ‘love and admiration’, explaining that when US officials ‘go into European institutions and encourage people to be better, it comes from a perspective of love and admiration’. European diplomats, however, interpret such remarks as part of a deliberate US strategy to leverage public criticism in order to extract policy concessions from traditional allies. With the Labour leadership transition virtually decided, attention in both capitals will turn to whether the new prime minister can manage competing domestic demands and Washington’s expectations for alignment on energy, security, and immigration.