Adam Boulton: He’s hyperactive but is Foreign Secretary David Lammy tough enough to get what Britain needs?

The United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) has an annual get-together in September for the good, the bad and the ugly of world diplomacy.

Global leaders, both democratic and autocratic, find themselves crammed together on Manhattan Island along with a babel of lobbyists, tech billionaires and demonstrators.

The UK’s new government will be under scrutiny in 10 days as it makes its debut in New York City this week, led by Sir Keir Starmer. The prime minister is so anxious to be there that he will cut short his time at the Labour conference to fly straight to the US.

The British team’s presence would usually be taken as a given. But it will be remarkable for two reasons: Rishi Sunak did not bother to attend last year, and the rest of the world is still sizing up the change to Labour and the return of an apparently stable British political outlook.

The new foreign secretary, David Lammy, will be at the prime minister’s side for meetings at UNGA, just as he was last Friday for this government’s inaugural visit to the White House.

Entering the Oval Office is always a big moment for a new British leader, with added poignancy that this visit was an intimate hello and goodbye to Joe Biden.

It is Lammy’s job to be more present on the international stage than anyone else in the new government as it tries to re-assert the UK internationally. He is seizing the opportunity with relish.

In his first nine weeks as foreign secretary, he has made more than a dozen trips abroad and held forty bilateral meetings with his opposite numbers. His voice is prominent in the debates over the two current world crises, the wars between Russia and Ukraine and in the Middle East.

After the inevitable negativity and suspicion of the withdrawal by “Global Britain” from the European Union, Lammy sees himself as the point man “to corral foreign policy”, co-ordinating national security with international development and bolstering the UK’s two traditional alliances with Europe and North America.

His team have coined the word “relational” for his approach and the boisterous and gregarious Lammy is laying great stress on the personal relationships he is building up with his foreign opposite numbers.

In August he made a joint visit to Israel with his French opposite number Stéphane Séjourné, and then this week travelled to Kyiv with the US secretary of state Antony Blinken, after hosting him at the Foreign Office. He regards the launch of the developing European security pact as one of his important early achievements.

In contrast to some recent British foreign secretaries, Lammy’s life story reads like training for the job.

First black Briton to attend Harvard

He was born in Holloway, north London, to Guyanese parents. He and his four siblings were raised largely by their mother in Tottenham. David won a choral scholarship to King’s School Peterborough and went on to study law at London University’s School of Oriental and African Studies and at Harvard in the US, where he was the first black Briton to attend the law school.

He has worked as an advocate in both the US and UK and is the author of a number of books including Out Of The Ashes: Britain After The Riots, which drew on his experiences as a Tottenham MP when rioting broke out in 2011.

His intellectual prowess was dented by a disastrous appearance on Celebrity Mastermind frequently referred to by the quizmaster John Humphreys in the comic warm-up to his after-dinner speeches. Lammy scored eight points on Muhammed Ali in the specialist round but in a nervous general knowledge section he failed to get Marie Curie, the Bastille, The Sopranos and Stilton cheese – he also answered that Henry VII had taken the throne after Henry VIII.

Lammy is one of the most experienced ministers in Starmer’s team. He has been an MP since 2000, taking over Tottenham from Bernie Grant, one of the UK’s first-ever black MPs. The same year Lammy was also elected briefly to the Greater London Assembly.

A self-described ‘small-c conservative’

He held government junior posts under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown across a range of departments including health, culture, business and education.

A political moderate, pro-European and a self-described “small-c conservative”, he backed David Miliband over his brother Ed, and pointedly continued to sit out Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership on the back benches.

He spent his spare time building his public profile. He earned £243,000 outside parliament between 2019 and 2023, including as a host on LBC radio – putting him at the top of the list of Labour MPs.

Lammy entered the shadow cabinet under Sir Keir Starmer in 2020 and was promoted to shadow foreign secretary in November 2021. In a speech this May, before the general election, he noted that he had spent nearly three years understudying the proper job.

His closest links are with the US where he spent summers with relatives while growing up and subsequently studied and worked.

Lammy is friendly and eager to please – the UK’s “closest friends and allies” most of all. Last week Lammy assured secretary Blinken: “The UK-US relationship is special. It’s special to me personally and it’s special to so many Brits and Americans.”

Blinken replied that the relationship is “essential”.

Both Democrats and Republicans are pleased by Lammy’s “NATO first” policy. In the Washington DC debate he is also in step with the US State Department, advocating extensive military backing for Ukraine, including striking into Russia with Storm Shadow missiles.

But some US voices are scornful of the UK’s current military capability and are waiting to see if Labour invests in improving it.

Read more:
David Lammy and Antony Blinken united on Ukraine
What you need to know about the new foreign secretary

The timing of the foreign secretary’s statement, banning a small portion of the UK’s already relatively small exports to Israel on the day six murdered Gaza hostages were being buried, aroused fury in Jerusalem and among Israel’s closest supporters in the US.

Typically outspoken but tries to build bridges

In a “cordial” phone call ahead of the announcement, Blinken asked Lammy what it would take to hold off the bans because of continuing ceasefire negotiations, but the move went ahead unchanged. Partisans for the Gazans have also condemned the UK action as too little and too late but the government believes it is in line with broader British public opinion.

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Lammy befriended Barack Obama 20 years ago at a Harvard law event. Typically outspoken, he is on the record describing Donald Trump as a “woman-hating, neo-Nazi-sympathising sociopath” and a “profound threat to the international order”.

Anticipating that this might cause problems should Trump be re-elected in November, Lammy visited the US eight times as shadow foreign secretary and tried to build bridges with the Republicans. He stressed their shared Christian values with Chris LaCivita, a Trump campaign manager, and Trump’s Senate allies Lindsey Graham and Eldridge Colby.

He has also courted JD Vance, Trump’s current vice-presidential pick, who once likened the former president to Hitler. Lammy says he was “reduced to tears” reading Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy, which reminded him of his own “tough upbringing”.

Lammy brings charm, ambition and enthusiastic diplomacy to the otherwise rather dour character of Starmer’s new model government.

Inevitably he has his critics at Westminster. Given his record of outspokenness, some wonder if he will overreach himself. Others question whether he is tough enough to get what Britain needs from his friends.

The world is holding its breath to see whether Kamala Harris or Donald Trump becomes the next president. The outcome will be highly consequential for top jobs here in Whitehall. The appointment of the new British ambassador to the US has been delayed until it is clear who has won.

All eyes will be on the hyperactive foreign secretary at UNGA and in the tense months ahead – Trump after all is already talking about World War Three. He and the rest of us have much at stake.

Well Leader of the Liberal Democrats Sir Ed Davey will be on Sunday Morning with Trevor Phillips from 8.30 this morning.

Foreign Secretary David Lammy, the Liberal Democrats’ Sir Ed Davey and Conservative leadership hopeful James Cleverly will be on Sunday Morning with Trevor Phillips on Sky News from 8.30am this morning.