Meet JD Vance’s English philosopher king

LONDON — From “Hillbilly Elegy” to vice presidential candidate, JD Vance has come far since his hardscrabble roots in Ohio, and is now the bearer of the Trump doctrine for a millennial generation. He’s also gained notoriety for raising the temperature of America’s political discourse.  

There’s a philosophical side to Vance shaped by a network of advisers and supporters on the other side of the Atlantic as well as by his American coterie. One of them is a surprising guru — an academic Vance calls his “British Sherpa.”

Dr. James Orr is an associate professor of philosophy of religion at Cambridge University and a leading figure behind the national conservative movement in the U.K. Besides teaching, Orr is emerging as a quietly influential figure who has convened right-leaning philosophers and theologians to exchange ideas. Last summer he hosted a debate featuring Peter Thiel, co-founder of PayPal and an early Trump donor.

Speaking for the first time about his close friendship with Vance, Orr told POLITICO’s Power Play podcast that the Republican vice presidential candidate may end up in the White House one day. He joked that Vance has a “trad bro” aspect to his character, which revels in tradition and spirituality, as well as a more maligned “tech bro” approach. 

The two became friends in 2019, a year after Vance converted to Catholicism. They discovered they shared an interest in faith and conservative politics (Orr’s wife is a prominent Anglican vicar): “We hit it off on long walks and exchanging ideas about the state of the world.”

Vance and his family visited the Orr family last year on vacation at his sprawling home on the banks of the River Cam in Cambridge. JD’s wife Usha Vance was a post-graduate student at the university and brought her parents and the Vances’ small children along for the break. 

Orr said Vance’s embrace of Catholic teaching chimed with his views on family life, which have stirred controversy. “Perhaps because of his broken upbringing, he understands the value of family more than perhaps those of us who’ve been fortunate enough to grow up with happy families. So he recognized what he missed out on. And you know, he loves his homeland.”

Power Play host Anne McElvoy asked Orr how this more thoughtful side of the fiery Vance squared with his much-derided criticism of prominent Democrats as “childless cat ladies.”  

“Each side of the political aisle works with crude caricatures and caricatures that many will find offensive,” Orr replied. “One has to see that they really do see themselves, I think correctly, as sort of anti-establishment figures. And that means that you can’t play nicely.”

Usefully for Vance, his British friend is also a defender of some of the veep candidate’s more provocative views. “I think there is a sort of link between the sort of ‘tech bro’ side of JD and the ‘trad bro’ side — that sort of intellectual fertility and civilizational confidence that cultural fertility is actually tied up with. Demographers think that there is an empirical connection and notice that highly religious communities that are confident about the future will tend to have more babies.”

Vance, he noted, takes a keen interest in British politics. Orr revealed that he may have encouraged Vance’s outspoken remark that the U.K. has become the first “truly Islamist country that will get a nuclear weapon” now that Labour is in power. 

“He was very eager to know what had happened in the election and why the Tories had failed so miserably,” Orr said. “We talked at one point about the five independent members of parliament who effectively won on a Gaza ticket, and maybe he clocked that, and perhaps that was the context of his remark closing the National Conservatism conference.”

“It was said jokingly in front of a few hundred conservatives … I don’t think he expected it to be brandished around as an attempt to undermine the special relationship.” 

Orr last met Vance in Washington in July, just days before he became Trump’s running mate and a few weeks after the U.K. general election.

He denied rumors that the Trump camp is hostile to U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s top team: “He thinks very highly of [Foreign Minister] David Lammy and thinks he’s somebody that he could work with.”

He added that “JD would get on very well with the Labour government. I think he’s often unfairly characterized as an isolationist when it comes to foreign policy, and that’s simply not true. He’s a realist of the old school.”