JD Vance has met Robert Jenrick during his holiday in the Cotswolds but is not expected to see the Conservative leader, Kemi Badenoch.
Jenrick held an hour-long one-on-one meeting with the US vice-president on Tuesday evening, according to a source close to the shadow justice secretary.
A Conservative spokesperson said that Badenoch was also speaking to Vance this week but that scheduling time for them to meet in person had proved difficult.
Both Vance and Badenoch’s teams played down the idea of a snub, but Vance’s decision to hold a meeting with Jenrick will raise eyebrows.
Jenrick was defeated by Badenoch in the Conservative leadership contest last year and is widely perceived to harbour continued ambitions for the top job. He has strayed well beyond his justice brief and repeatedly caused controversy with his incendiary language on migration.
There are reports that Vance will also meet Nigel Farage, the Reform UK leader, on Wednesday. Farage’s spokesperson did not reply to a request for comment.
A Conservative source said that Jenrick was attending a drinks event with Vance on Tuesday evening alongside others, including the former chancellor George Osborne.
They said Badenoch had been in contact with Vance but that they had been unable to find time for a meeting due to diary clashes. The US vice-president spent last weekend with David Lammy, the foreign secretary, while Badenoch has been in Epping and the Isle of Wight this week.
Both Vance and Jenrick have expressed staunch opposition to equality, diversity and inclusion initiatives, and voiced concerns about the erosion of freedom of speech.
In February, the vice-president claimed that a “backslide away from conscience rights has placed the basic liberties of religious Britons” under threat, and he attacked the use of laws to enforce buffer zones around abortion clinics.
Asked about his remarks before meeting Lammy last Friday, Vance claimed that his concerns related more widely to “the entire collective west”.
Vance is on holiday in the Cotswolds with his family and has been pictured visiting the Daylesford farm shop near Chipping Norton.
Responding to reports that Farage was due to meet Vance, the Liberal Democrat leader, Ed Davey, called on Farage to “tell the White House that in Europe we stand together against Putin’s aggression”.
He added: “But Farage won’t do that because he’s much more interested in pleasing Trump than in standing up for British values and European security.”