New York
It had been 999 days since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and David Lammy wanted to send the world a warning. Sitting in the chair of the UN Security Council in New York for the first time since becoming Foreign Secretary in July, he declared: “Unless Putin fails, we could plunge into a world where the principles enshrined in the UN Charter will have lost their meaning. Unless Putin fails, others will be inspired to wage imperialist wars of conquest. Unless Putin fails, our faith in international law may never return. And unless Putin fails, each of our borders will be less safe.”
Behind Lammy was a large 1952 mural by the Norwegian artist Per Krohg depicting a phoenix rising out of the ashes of war and slavery. Ever since Ukraine’s resistance to Russia’s invasion began, some Western liberals have cast the country in this heroic role. On 17 November, Volodymyr Zelensky’s government was bolstered by President Joe Biden’s decision to approve the firing of US-made long-range missiles into Russia (the UK is now expected to supply Storm Shadow missiles, which have a range of around 250 kilometres).
But in two months’ time, Donald Trump will become US president and he has vowed to end the war in Ukraine within 24 hours. A quick deal would enshrine Russia’s territorial gains in eastern Ukraine and Crimea. In such circumstances, how can the West possibly ensure that “Putin fails”? After Lammy had finished chairing the Security Council meeting, I met him in the back room at the UN Building where the UK delegation was based (cream leather armchairs and a plate of cookies creating a more relaxed environment). Dressed soberly in a dark suit and navy tie, he had that day led UN sessions on Gaza and the civil war in Sudan, and appeared alongside his Ukrainian counterpart, Andrii Sybiha.
Trump, I reminded the Foreign Secretary, had praised Vladimir Putin’s 2022 invasion as “genius” and repeatedly hailed his leadership. But Lammy, 52, is not troubled by the president-elect’s comments: “I’ve been a politician for 25 years and I understand the different philosophies at play. There’s a deep philosophical underpinning to friends in the Republican Party that I’ve known for many years, thinking back to people like [former US secretary of state] Condoleezza Rice. Donald Trump has some continuity with this position, which is ‘peace through strength’.
“What I do know about Donald Trump is that he doesn’t like losers and he doesn’t want to lose; he wants to get the right deal for the American people. And 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.”
Back in 2018, Lammy, then a polemical Labour backbencher, took a diametrically opposed line, describing Trump as a “profound threat to the international order”. Faced with these comments today, Lammy boomed: “Well I think that’s all old news, it’s so old it’s dusty! Here we are, many, many years later. You’ll struggle to find any politician in the British system but also across the world who didn’t have things to say about Donald Trump on the day-to-day in a very hyperactive period actually, because of the high point of Twitter at the time.”
So excoriating were Lammy’s past comments on Trump that some concluded the US election result made his position as Britain’s chief diplomat untenable. To end such speculation, Keir Starmer guaranteed that Lammy would remain Foreign Secretary for the full parliamentary term. Did he ever worry that he was in danger? “Erm, no!” he replied with hearty laughter. “I don’t want to say I’m an old bruiser but I’ve been around a long time in politics [he became MP for Tottenham in 2000]. Headlines come and go. The important thing is knowing that you’re getting on with the job.” As if to remind critics of his close links to Starmer, he recalled: “I co-chaired his [Labour leadership] campaign!”
Lammy’s position was aided by his willingness to build bridges and deepen relationships with Republicans. As a decades-long follower of US politics – he attended Harvard Law School and befriended fellow alumnus Barack Obama – he concluded earlier than most that Trump would win again, and on a trip to Washington in March met senior Republicans, including JD Vance, now vice-president-elect. “When I spoke to friends in the Democratic Party, and I raised this privately, I just felt that they hadn’t centred the economy in the way that we [Labour] had done just coming into our own election cycle.
“It felt that the campaign was very focused on 6 January [the pro-Trump riot at the Capitol building in 2021], very focused on Donald Trump personally, very focused on abortion rights. But my view is that you don’t get permission to talk about those things unless you have satisfied the bread and butter – the economy and issues of immigration.”
[See also: The Lammy Doctrine]
On 27 September, accompanied by Starmer, the British ambassador to Washington Karen Pierce, and the then No 10 chief of staff Sue Gray, Lammy met Trump for a two-hour dinner in New York. “He’s a very gracious host, very keen to put us all at ease and to ensure that we were comfortable, well fed, well watered,” Lammy told me. One ally cited the Foreign Secretary’s “American-sized personality” as an advantage – all backslapping bonhomie rather than stiff handshakes.
“He was very proud to show us round his home,” Lammy said. “Trump Tower has one of the most impressive views of Manhattan. We arrived and he insisted on turning the lights out so we could look at the beautiful view up on the 52nd floor. He was very funny, very engaging and very charismatic.
“He was also, as you would expect for a consummate politician, hugely engaged with what had happened in the UK – that we had won. He wanted to find out from the Prime Minister how he had won; I think he was taking notes in relation to his own campaign.”
One of Lammy’s most notable acts as Foreign Secretary has been the agreement to transfer the British-held Chagos Islands to Mauritius – a deal Reform leader Nigel Farage and others have claimed Trump will veto, arguing that it would boost Chinese influence in the Indian Ocean.
“There’s progressive realism at work here,” Lammy said in reference to the foreign policy doctrine he first outlined in opposition. “The most important thing about that deal was securing the [US-UK] naval base and securing that naval base well beyond any of our lifetimes [99 years]. That secures global security in many, many ways and it certainly keeps that important part of the Indian Ocean out of play for the Chinese.”
He added: “I’m very confident that when the new administration looks at the detail of this deal that they will stand behind it because Donald Trump knows what a good deal looks like [a reference to his 1987 book The Art of the Deal] – and this is a good deal.”
While Trump has threatened to impose tariffs of up to 60 per cent on all Chinese-made goods, Lammy has led a new British approach. He visited China last month – where he met with the foreign minister, Wang Yi in Beijing, and British business leaders in Shanghai – and has abandoned the Conservatives’ hawkish rhetoric.
On the day we spoke, Starmer became the first UK prime minister to meet Xi Jinping, at the G20 in Rio de Janeiro, since 2018. The latter even referenced Rachel Reeves’ slogan of “fixing the foundations” of the British economy. In opposition, Labour had backed a motion declaring Beijing’s repressive treatment of the Muslim-majority Uyghurs in the Chinese autonomous region of Xinjiang to be “genocide” – a stance now abandoned. But Lammy rejects accusations of going soft. “I’ll tell you what’s going soft on China: it’s a UK where we just don’t know where we stand. I counted about seven positions on China under the last government. We had David Cameron and George Osborne’s ‘golden era’, where they were drinking beers in the pub with President Xi; we had the rather humiliating scene of Theresa May having to do a U-turn on the botched Huawei deal [for access to the UK’s 5G infrastructure]. The problem with our position on China was that we didn’t have a position. We didn’t have a position of dealing with a global superpower and that simply was not good enough.”
Economic logic has helped force a recalibration (China now accounts for 18 per cent of global GDP) and Lammy is unashamed about his department’s role. “My FCDO [Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office] is an FCDO that centres growth on behalf of the British people,” he said, citing improved relations with the Gulf states (“I look forward to welcoming the Qataris for a state visit”). “We are the international delivery arm of the agenda that has been set out by Rachel Reeves and the Prime Minister.”
Only last year, Lammy spoke of how Starmer and Biden could share a “progressive moment” if Labour won the general election. But Trump is part of a growing nationalist international: Italy’s Giorgia Meloni, Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu and India’s Narendra Modi, among other populist leaders.
“We have to make a distinction at this time between the darkness of the autocracies of Russia, Iran and the DPRK [North Korea] and an agenda that would break up the rules-based order – bring us back to ‘might is right’ – and a progressive agenda, notwithstanding the politics of individual democracies, that would stand against that,” Lammy said. “I believe that the UK, the United States and major partners will continue to struggle against that… It’s a tipping point on sovereignty: do we want to live in a world where big countries can invade smaller countries?”
For David Lammy – and Ukraine – much rests on Donald Trump concluding that the answer is no.
[See also: How Trump and Putin could remake the world]
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This article appears in the 20 Nov 2024 issue of the New Statesman, Combat Zone