David Lammy has taken many political shapes in his long career. He’s one of the few members of the Shadow Cabinet who can remember life in a Labour government. But he also nominated Jeremy Corbyn to be leader, something he has since made clear he deeply regrets. At a fringe meeting at the Labour conference in 2017, he praised Nigel Farage’s campaigning style. Then, he was thumping the desk at every opportunity, in true Farage style.
I first started to think Labour might be serious about getting into government when, a few years later, I turned up to another fringe meeting with Lammy at the 2022 Labour Party conference hoping that he might do some more shouting. Instead, I found myself watching Serious Lammy, who only got mildly animated when someone in the audience suggested Labour would bring back the International Development Department in its current form. The shadow Foreign Secretary didn’t like that, saying it would create “massive inertia”. It was so boring, so sensible, so serious.
Labour has manifestly been serious about government for a long while now, and so Lammy is at the stage of fleshing out the party’s foreign policy. He has written a long essay for Foreign Affairs magazine in which he analyses the traditions of previous Labour foreign secretaries, and proposes a “progressive realism” in foreign policy. This is one which still wants to commit to ideals while also dealing with the world as it is. He takes readers on a tour of the world as he sketches out how a Labour government would relate to each part of it. It’s fascinating reading – but will the next incarnation of Lammy be the foreign secretary who delivers it, or will that job go to someone else?
There have been rather ludicrous suggestions that another David – Lord Cameron – should stay on as Labour’s foreign secretary after the election. Aside from the political weirdness of that, this also ignores that Cameron’s foreign policy approach when he was prime minister was largely disastrous, that it is therefore still weird that Rishi Sunak gave him the job of Foreign Secretary, and that the consequences of Cameron’s disasters are there in Lammy’s article as problems Labour would need to fix.
Lammy talks about building “closer foreign and security co-operation with the EU” and seeking a “new geopolitical partnership with the EU”. Renegotiating partnerships with the EU is something Cameron is famously bad at. It may well be that Labour’s own version of a relationship with the EU is also a messy mistake- the Tories would like to say that Keir Starmer wants to take Britain right back into the EU altogether – but it would be better for a different David to preside over that.
Speaking of other men called David, a more likely candidate (at least in his own mind) to replace Lammy once Labour is in government is David Miliband. He too crops up in Lammy’s essay as the man who coined the phrase “the age of impunity” after the West failed to respond to Bashar al-Assad’s use of chemical weapons in Syria, or to stand up to Vladimir Putin. Miliband has been popping up more in London and holding court with political admirers. He might be more interested in being British ambassador to Washington, though, given his family is now settled in the US.
Miliband used to write long essays, too, though his were often so coded that even experienced Westminster hands needed the services of a professional translator to decode them. He would also find it harder to take the lead from Starmer, given his own failed attempt to be Labour leader which foundered in part due to his lack of interpersonal skills.
Besides, there doesn’t seem to be a vacancy. Lammy and Starmer enjoy a very good and close personal relationship. The Labour leader really likes his shadow Foreign Secretary, which counts for a lot. He is, I understand, also very happy with the current arrangement of Lammy covering the Foreign Office, John Healey shadowing defence, and Lisa Nandy doing international development. Lammy wrote the essay himself with his adviser Ben Judah, but Starmer sets the overall direction of foreign policy. Or at least, Starmer’s office does. Some in Labour worry that Sue Gray is pushing the leader, and therefore Lammy, to be more pro-Palestine in order to mollify the Shadow Cabinet. They fear this will come at the cost of failing to stand up for Israel’s right to defend itself against the circle of enemies who wish its annihilation.
Mind you, the same could be said of the Tory David, whose party colleagues complain is listening too much to his deputy Andrew Mitchell when it comes to talking about Israel. So many different Davids, and so many different David Lammys, for that matter. A lot could change before the next election, even if the name of the man in the brief stays the same.
Keir Starmer's David dilemma: Lammy, Cameron or Miliband?
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18.04.2024
David Lammy has taken many political shapes in his long career. He’s one of the few members of the Shadow Cabinet who can remember life in a Labour government. But he also nominated Jeremy Corbyn to be leader, something he has since made clear he deeply regrets. At a fringe meeting at the Labour conference in 2017, he praised Nigel Farage’s campaigning style. Then, he was thumping the desk at every opportunity, in true Farage style.
I first started to think Labour might be serious about getting into government when, a few years later, I turned up to another fringe meeting with Lammy at the 2022 Labour Party conference hoping that he might do some more shouting. Instead, I found myself watching Serious Lammy, who only got mildly animated when someone in the audience suggested Labour would bring back the International Development Department in its current form. The shadow Foreign Secretary didn’t like that, saying it would create “massive inertia”. It was so boring, so sensible, so serious.
Labour has manifestly been serious about government for a long while now, and so Lammy is at the stage of fleshing out the party’s foreign policy. He has written a........
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