David Lammy was always a somewhat implausible choice as foreign secretary. His historical reputation for mouthing off on social media on a range of topics – not least Donald Trump’s fitness for office – seemed a blatant hostage to fortune. His ill-judged tweeting has come back to haunt him this weekend.
A 2019 tweet from Lammy is what’s caused new embarrassment. Trump said there had been no president who had been ‘treated so badly’ as he had. In response, Lammy said: ‘4 US Presidents have been assassinated snowflake.’ That’s not the kind of language to be expected of someone who will end up as foreign secretary.
In 2018, Lammy called then-President Trump a ‘neo-Nazi-sympathising sociopath’ in an opinion piece for Time magazine. The article was published ahead of Trump’s first visit to the UK, and Lammy publicly committed to be one of ‘tens of thousands on the streets, protesting against our government’s capitulation to this tyrant in a toupee’. For added measure he called Trump a ‘dangerous clown’ and ‘a profound threat to the international order’. No room for doubt there.
Yesterday, Lammy did condemn the assassination attempt, and he condemned it quickly. No doubt mindful of his earlier rhetorical excesses, he has been busy backtracking in recent weeks and months on his criticisms of Trump. In May, as shadow foreign secretary, he met in Washington with JD Vance, a close Trump ally and potential vice presidential pick. ‘It doesn’t matter who is in No. 10 –you work with the United States’, Lammy said in a television interview in January. Lammy added that the job of the foreign secretary is ‘also to try and persuade and use your influence’.
Can Lammy really so easily disown his past public statements? His recent change of attitude is hard to take at face value. Why would Trump go out of his way to work with Lammy? Is he really that dim? It also raises a broader question about Lammy’s actual beliefs: did he really not mean the things he said about Trump just a few years ago? And if so, why would anyone choose to believe anything he says now? This goes go the very heart of his credibility as foreign secretary. Aside from possible dishonesty, there’s two possibilities here. The first is that, six years ago, David Lammy was not diplomatically mature enough to be foreign secretary. Either that, or Labour are taking Republicans for fools.
If Trump does win the presidency in November, Lammy will be in an awkward situation.
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