JD Vance has taken aim at the UK and Europe over what he claimed was “backsliding” free speech and democracy.
The US vice president held no punches when addressing European leaders at the Munich Security Conference in Germany on Friday.
“When I look at Europe today, it’s sometimes not so clear what happened to some of the Cold War’s winners,” he said, taking the leaders to task on issues like migration, security and democracy.
“And perhaps most concerningly, I look to our very dear friends, the United Kingdom, where the backslide away from conscience rights has placed the basic liberties of religious Britons, in particular, in the crosshairs.”
Mr Vance criticised the country for the jailing of 51-year-old Adam Smith-Connor – who was imprisoned for breaching a safe zone around an abortion clinic in Bournemouth.
“After British law enforcement spotted him and demanded to know what he was praying for, Adam replied simply, it was on behalf of the unborn son he and his former girlfriend had aborted years before,” Mr Vance said.
The conviction was not related to Smith-Connor’s thoughts while he was in the safe zone.
He then switched his focus to the car attack in Munich on Thursday in which 36 people were injured.
Mr Vance wrongly described the suspect in that attack as an asylum seeker, when in reality he has lived in Munich since he arrived as an unaccompanied minor in 2016 and has a work permit.
As he listed values he believes Europe is diverging away from the US over, he raised immigration.
“I can’t bring it up again without thinking about the terrible victims who had a beautiful winter day in Munich ruined,” he said.
“Our thoughts and prayers are with them and will remain with them. But why did this happen in the first place?”
It’s a “terrible story” that we’ve heard “way too many times in Europe”, he added.
Mr Vance’s speech was the latest wake-up call for the UK and European nations in terms of security and the Trump administration’s new foreign policy aims.
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