David Lammy has refused to say whether he was wrong about Donald Trump, after previously calling the former US president a “neo-Nazi-sympathising sociopath”.
The Foreign Secretary said Trump had the “thickest of skins” after he was challenged over comments he made as a backbench MP in 2018 and if it could affect UK-US relations if the Republican nominee wins November’s presidential election.
Mr Lammy told BBC Breakfast: “Donald Trump is the biggest, in many ways, of political characters we have at this point on the planet.
“Lots of people have had things to say, but in our common interests, with security as a central challenge in the global community – war in the Middle East, war in Europe – with tremendous challenges for costs of living across the globe, there is a lot of common cause that the UK can strike with the US, and we will do that with whomever is in the White House.”
The Foreign Secretary added: “There is a lot of rhetoric, but look at the action. He was the first to give Javelins to Ukraine after 2015. He talked about withdrawing from Nato, he actually increased troops to Nato.
“So in a grown-up world, in the national interests of this country, of course, if the American people choose Donald Trump as their president, we will work as closely with him as we can, and we will seek to influence him where we disagree.”
Mr Lammy wrote an article for Time magazine in 2018 in which he described Trump as “a woman-hating, neo-Nazi-sympathising sociopath” who was a “profound threat to the international order”.
He added: “I will be one of tens of thousands on the streets, protesting against our government’s capitulation to this tyrant in a toupée.”
In more recent comments dating back to 2021, when he was in the shadow Cabinet, he said: “Donald Trump’s entire presidency has been a reign of recklessness, narcissism and delusion.”
The Tottenham MP has strained to establish positive relations with the Republican Party both in Opposition and now in Government, including meetings with JD Vance, who has been picked as Mr Trump’s running mate.
He told Sky News this week: “What I would say about JD Vance is that we were able to find common ground.
“We’re both from poor backgrounds, both suffered from addiction issues in our family, which we’ve written about, both of us Christians, and now I’ve met him on a few occasions, and we have been able to find common ground and get on.”
The Foreign Secretary said that he did not “recognise” Mr Vance’s recent comments about Labour turning the UK into the world’s first Islamist nuclear country.
There was speculation prior to the general election that Mr Lammy might not be handed the foreign secretary brief in Government, having held the shadow position for three years.
Names including Douglas Alexander, a close ally of Gordon Brown, or David Miliband, the former Labour foreign secretary, were mooted as possible appointments to the role.
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