JD Vance has slammed European leaders for failing to control immigration. The US vice-president said they were putting democracy in danger by failing to take voters' demands for immigration controls seriously. He made the comment as he insisted that the US under Donald Trump’s leadership continued to be an ally of European nations, including the UK.

Speaking to the website UnHerd, Mr Vance said: “We’re very frustrated – ‘we’ meaning me, the president, certainly the entire Trump administration – that European populations keep on crying out for more sensible economic and migration policies, and the leaders of Europe keep on going through these elections and keep on offering the European peoples the opposite of what they seem to have voted for.

“The entire democratic project of the West falls apart when the people keep on asking for less migration, and they keep on being rewarded by their leaders with more migration.”

The vice-president said Mr Trump’s White House is “working very hard” on a trade deal with the UK thanks partly to the president’s love of the Royal Family.

An agreement is still on the cards, despite the White House’s imposing of a 10% trade tariff on most UK goods and a 25% charge on car imports, Mr Vance said.

He said: “The president really loves the United Kingdom. He loved the Queen. He admires and loves the King.”

Mr Vance also insisted the US remained committed to its alliance with the UK and European nations as a whole. He said Britain had been in the right in the 1956 Suez crisis, when the US humiliated the UK by forcing it to abandon attempts to regain control of the Suez Canal.

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has said the UK will “keep calm and fight for the best deal with the US” in the face of US tariffs. The Government’s top priority is to persuade the US to eliminate or cut tariffs on cars after British-made vehicles worth £9billion were sold in the US last year.

US Treasury secretary Scott Bessent is reported to have made the UK, Australia, South Korea, India and Japan the top targets for new trade deals and has been in touch with officials from all five countries. Chancellor Rachel Reeves last week said she planned to hold talks with Mr Bessent.

Speaking to UnHerd, Mr Vance said the president’s personal affection for the UK made a deal more likely.

Another key point in the UK’s favour was that it does not run a trade deficit with the US, he suggested.

Mr Vance, who enlisted as a US Marine and was deployed to Iraq in a non-combat role, said European nations had sometimes made better foreign policy judgements than the US. Praising European leaders who opposed the invasion of Iraq in 2003, which was backed by the British government at the time, he said “a lot of European nations” had been right.

And he backed the UK and France over their invasion of Egypt alongside Israel in 1956, when they tried to seize the Suez Canal after Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalised the key waterway. The incident led to the resignation of British prime minister Anthony Eden and established that the UK could not operate a foreign policy independently of the US, led at the time by president Dwight Eisenhower.

Mr Vance said: “I think – frankly – the British and the French were certainly right in their disagreements with Eisenhower about the Suez Canal.”

Mr Trump imposed sweeping tariffs on imports to the US several weeks ago, rocking the world economy, sending stock prices tumbling and sparking fears of a global recession.

Since then, the president has rowed back on tariffs, reducing the rate paid on imports from most countries to 10% and, on Saturday, exempting electronics such as smartphones and laptops from the levy – including the 145% charge on imports from China.

Business and trade minister Sarah Jones welcomed Mr Vance’s comments but declined to comment on the progress of negotiations. She said: “The conversations are ongoing, I can’t update more than that.

“We know we’re in a good position. We are having good conversations.”

Ms Reeves will aim to continue negotiations for an economic deal with the US later this month when she travels to Washington to attend the International Monetary Fund’s spring meetings with other finance ministers.

Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey said Mr Trump is an “unreliable partner” and reiterated his party’s calls for a vote on any trade deal with the US.

He said: “It would be deeply undemocratic if Parliament were to be sidelined on such a critical issue for the country.

“Conservative and Labour MPs should commit now to voting down any Trump deal that undercuts British farmers and their high food standards, sells out the NHS, or waters down protections for children online.”