“Shame on Putin!” As David Lammy sat in the chair of the UN Security Council for the first time, his voice reverberated through the ornate chamber. The Russian delegation had just vetoed a resolution calling for a ceasefire in Sudan where one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises is unfolding. Lammy assailed Putin for “pretending to be a partner of the Global South while condemning black Africans to further killing, further rape, further starvation”.
Hostility towards Putin’s Russia – a “mafia state” seeking to become a “mafia empire” in Lammy’s words – is one of the defining strands of UK foreign policy under Labour. This week saw British-made Storm Shadow missiles fired by Ukraine into Russia for the first time. During a visit to Moldova, Lammy signed a new defence and security partnership with a state increasingly menaced by Putin. Allies argue no recent British foreign secretary has denounced Russia as unambiguously as Lammy.
But he is contending with an increasingly fraught geopolitical environment. Donald Trump’s vow to end the war in Ukraine within “24 hours” has prompted fears of a deal on Russian terms. Through pragmatic diplomacy, Lammy aims to help avert this outcome. “What I do know about Donald Trump is that he doesn’t like losers and he doesn’t want to lose,” he said – appealing to the president-elect’s self-image – when we spoke at the UN this week. “He knows that the right deal for the American people is peace in Europe, and that means a sustainable peace – not Russia achieving its aims and coming back for more in the years ahead.”
While in opposition, Lammy outlined a doctrine of “progressive realism”, which he defined as using realist means to achieve progressive ends. Breaking bread at Trump Tower – Lammy and Keir Starmer had a two-hour dinner with the Republican in September – is one such attempt. Lammy once called Trump a “profound threat to the international order” – but by engaging with the president-elect, the Foreign Secretary hopes to better preserve that order.
His team insist that this Atlanticism is compatible with the third strand of Lammy’s foreign policy: improved relations with China. “We didn’t have a position of dealing with a global superpower and that simply was not good enough,” said Lammy, who visited China last month. Once again, he argues, this is realist diplomacy at the service of progressive causes: “Climate, AI, the safety of our global community.”
Labour says its China policy is guided by “three Cs”: cooperate, compete and challenge (on human rights issues) – an echo of the Biden administration’s own strategy. But Trump’s victory will put this approach under greater strain: he has vowed to impose tariffs of up to 60 per cent on all Chinese-made goods (and tariffs of up to 20 per cent on the UK and Europe). Britain, some argue, will ultimately be forced to choose between closer relations with Beijing or more distant ones with Washington.
The final strand of Lammy’s foreign policy is an attempt to rebuild relations with old allies and forge new ones. Britain is seeking a defence and security pact and closer economic ties with the EU as part of a post-Brexit “reset” (another pivot that Trump will test).
But Lammy is determined to look beyond traditional partners in the G7 and Europe. “We’ve got to be better in the Gulf, stronger in partnering with countries like India and Brazil,” he told me (aides speak of a “relentless search for deals”).
Such activity is informed by a realism about the UK’s diminished global status. Perhaps the closest the country came to a post-imperial role was serving as “the bridge” between Europe and US – one burned by Brexit.
Now, in a changed world, Britain is searching for a new role. “We don’t appreciate how the world has changed since 1997 in Britain,” Lammy told me before the election. “In 1997, the UK still administered a major Chinese city as a colony [Hong Kong]; the British economy was larger than the Indian and Chinese economies combined.”
To understand David Lammy’s globetrotting, remember how much smaller it is now.
This piece first appeared in the Morning Call newsletter; receive it every morning by subscribing on Substack here
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