David Lammy has hailed “British fair play, civility and tolerance” as key to a message of national unity to be delivered by Sir Keir Starmer at Labour’s annual conference next week.
The shadow Foreign Secretary warned that the “politics of division” which he said was being peddled by some Conservatives, threatened to “drag our country backwards”.
In a wide-ranging interview, the Tottenham MP also told The Standard:
- Labour can “strike a better deal” with Brussels when Britain’s Brexit divorce deal comes up for review in 2025, identifying areas of cooperation including security along with veterinary and professional standards.
- That after visiting Washington for talks two weeks ago, he was confident that Joe Biden would unlock more funding for Ukraine against Putin’s invasion despite some Republicans objecting.
- He was surprised at Diane Abbott’s claim that Jewish people experience “prejudice” but not racism, as “I know they aren’t Diane’s views”. But he declined to say whether the trailblazing MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington should be allowed back into the Labour parliamentary party pending an investigation.
- Condemned Conservative mayoral candidate Susan Hall’s claim that Jewish people in London feel unsafe under Sadiq Khan as a “really unsavoury dog whistle”, stressing the Muslim Labour Mayor “has gone out of his way to condemn anti-Semitism”.
Mr Lammy reserved his strongest criticism for Home Secretary Suella Braverman after she gave an incendiary speech at the Tories’ conference in Manchester this week.
He said that her “language and tone, her insistence on focusing so often on minorities in society, departs from what you’d expect from a civilised democracy”.
He emphasised that Labour would strike a very contrasting tone at its annual rally which opens in Liverpool on Sunday.
The Tottenham MP, who was a leading figure in Sir Keir’s campaign when he ran for leader, said his friend had successfully detoxified the Labour brand after its crises over anti-Semitism under Jeremy Corbyn.
“He’s someone who wants to bring people together. I think it’s a theme that he’ll pick up at conference this year, and to plough a course that we can all participate in,” he said.
“He’ll be setting out a vision. I think he’ll be attempting to bring our nation together. I think it will be in sharp contrast to what we’ve seen in Manchester this week.
“I think the politics of division in order to play to a particular part of the electorate, I think have just dragged our country backwards and made us very insular,” he added, arguing Labour was keen to reach out to allies and partners in contrast to what he described as the “Little England” approach of some Rightwingers in Manchester.
“The British are known for their fair play, their civility, their tolerance and understanding,” he explained.
“It’s why we have become such a successful multicultural, multi-ethnic society. It’s why we have the first Prime Minister of Indian descent, and I sit here obviously as a pretty prominent ethnic minority in public life.
“That is not the same across European countries, all European countries.”
David Cameron reached across the political divide to ask Mr Lammy to lead a review into the criminal justice system in 2017, and the Labour politician said the former PM would have acted differently to Mr Sunak.
“I simply don’t recognise that someone like Suella Braverman would have had a place in former Centre-Right, One Nation administrations.”
But he also added: “Whilst Rishi Sunak doesn’t use the same language as Suella Braverman, he has her in his Cabinet as something of an outrider, and it’s very, very dangerous.”
The shadow Foreign Secretary, the author of a 2020 book called Tribes: A Search for Belonging in a Divided Society, said that he had long been wrestling with issues surrounding identity.
But from his campaigning in the past fortnight for byelections in Rutherglen and Mid Bedfordshire, Mr Lammy said “no one” on the doorstep was raising issues about sexual politics or demanding that Britain quit the ECHR.
Instead voters were raising the state of the NHS, the cost of living, policing and crime.
“So I don’t think it’s going to work. I think it’s out of a particular playbook,” he said, while noting that a divisive politics and climate scepticism had been rejected by voters in Australia when they elected Labour’s sister party under Anthony Albanese.
But Mr Lammy also insisted that he would be happy to work with one of the leading writers of that right-wing playbook, Donald Trump, if he and Labour are both returned to power next year.
“Oh, absolutely. If I have the privilege of being Foreign Secretary, my number one obligation is to pursue what is in the national interests of the British people. And on many issues of defence, national security particularly, our interests align with the United States,” he said.
“It’s why we have a special relationship. It’s a special relationship that goes way beyond the incumbents of the White House or indeed Number 10. It’s why Wilson can work with Nixon. It’s why Kennedy can work with Macmillan.”
