JD Vance’s Lavish Cotswolds Stop Leaves Locals Fuming
It was hardly a quiet Monday in the Cotswolds when JD Vance, the US vice-president, rolled into one of Britain’s most exclusive farm shops and left an entire village in lockdown.
Daylesford Organic, a sprawling 3,500-acre estate famed for its eye-wateringly expensive produce, became the epicentre of political spectacle as an 18-vehicle motorcade swept through the rolling Oxfordshire countryside.
Billionaire donor Lord Antony Bamford, whose wife Lady Carole founded the high-end store, hosted Vance for nearly three hours inside.
The Bamfords are no strangers to high-profile companies. Daylesford House famously played host to Boris and Carrie Johnson’s wedding celebration in 2022.
Inside the shop, known for selling a wicker blanket basket priced at over $1,000, Vance was spotted sampling bread at the artisan counter. Outside, though, the mood was far less relaxed.
Villagers found themselves facing road closures, blocked public footpaths, armed officers, and sniffer dogs.
The American VP had arrived in nearby Dean on Sunday with his wife and three children, bringing with him a wave of US Secret Service agents and heavily armed British police.
The once-serene lanes around the 18th-century Manor House, where the family is staying, became an armed fortress.
Frustration was already brewing by Saturday. Roads were shut off. Residents were stopped for ID checks. Police vehicles, British and American, rumbled along narrow rural lanes, shattering the quiet charm of the so-called “Hamptons of England.”
“Everybody is welcome,” one local told LBC, “but this… this is something else.”
One woman told The Times the village had seen “one blinking pantomime after the other” and added: “We are used to the great and good here. Before David Cameron moved in, we had Douglas Hur,d and he was lovely.
We have Ben Kingsley in Spelsbury, and we see him in the woods walking his dog, but to close off the roads is ridiculous.”
Another resident told The Observer that police had gone door-to-door, asking for personal details and even social media accounts.
“JD Vance is every bit as unwelcome in the U.K. as Donald Trump,” said the Stop Trump Coalition, which protested the former US president’s visit to Scotland last month, speaking to The Telegraph.
Vance is set to visit US troops stationed at RAF Fairford in Gloucestershire on Wednesday. But in this corner of Oxfordshire, the dust — and the grumbles — from his arrival are likely to linger.
