David Lammy became the U.K. Foreign Secretary earlier this month after the Labour Party defeated the Conservative Party in the July 4 general election. Lammy had previously served as the Shadow Foreign Secretary since 2021, and held various positions prior to that, having been elected as a Member of Parliament (MP) for the Labour Party in 2000.
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In 2018, Lammy penned an Ideas article for TIME magazine titled “I’m a British Lawmaker. Here’s Why I’m Protesting Trump’s Visit to the U.K.” Within the piece, he referred to Trump, the then-President of the United States, as “a woman-hating, neo-Nazi-sympathizing sociopath.” Lammy went on to argue that Trump “is also a profound threat to the international order that has been the foundation of Western progress for so long.”
Lammy was asked about his former comments regarding Trump during a televised interview on Thursday morning with Sky News. The U.K. network’s journalist Kay Burley asked Lammy: “Apparently you called him [Trump] a ‘neo-Nazi sociopath’ and a ‘tyrant in a toupee.’ Do you stand by those comments?”
In response, Lammy said: “Kay, you are going to struggle to find any politician who didn’t have things to say about Donald Trump back in the day. But today I’m standing here as the U.K. Foreign Secretary, you know that I’ve been to Washington’s D.C. eight times since becoming Shadow Foreign Secretary and now [the] Foreign Secretary. I meet with Republicans and Democrats, many close to Trump, and we will work with whomever the United States choose to put in the White House and become their next President.”
With the Labour government now in power in the U.K., and former President Donald Trump campaigning as the Republican candidate for the U.S. 2024 elections, there is a chance the two politicians may well end up working together in some capacity.
In the same Sky News interview, Lammy was asked about his thoughts on Trump’s vice presidential pick, Ohio Senator J.D. Vance, who last week claimed that the U.K. could become the first “truly Islamist country that will get a nuclear weapon.” Responding to Vance’s remarks, Lammy said: “I don’t recognize those comments. We got votes in the election from all corners of the country and all sorts of people.”
Lammy went on to say that he has been able to find “common ground” with Vance, who he has previously met. “We’re both from poor backgrounds, both suffered from addiction issues in our family, which we’ve written about, both of us Christians. And now I’ve met him on a few occasions, and we have been able to find common ground and get on.” Vance famously chronicled his upbringing in his 2016 critically-acclaimed memoir titled Hillbilly Elegy.