“Tyrant in a toupee” is not the sort of slur that US president-elect Donald Trump would tend to ignore. Yet this is exactly what must happen if the new Trump administration is to maintain good relations with Britain through its chief diplomat, foreign secretary David Lammy.
Lammy, a former high-flying barrister-turned-politician, made the ungracious comment alongside a slew of others about Trump in 2018, yet he insists he still has the links with the US election winner’s team to get the job done. When they had dinner in September Trump even offered him a second helping of chicken, said Lammy this week as evidence that they now have a better relationship.
Britain under Keir Starmer’s new Labour government covets close ties with Trump’s White House and, if possible, a US-UK free trade deal along with further co-operation on myriad issues from Ukraine to how to handle threats from Russia and China.
The performance of Lammy, who also appears to have struck up an unlikely friendship with incoming US vice-president JD Vance, could be key to making it all happen.
There have been whispers in Westminster about Lammy’s future since even before he was appointed foreign secretary in July. Yet he has grown used to confounding people’s expectations all his life.
The son of Guayanese immigrants, he was raised by his mother alone from the age of 12 when his alcoholic father walked out on them. Lammy has spoken about overcoming the “stigma” this placed on the family.
He excelled academically and went on to study a master’s degree in law at Harvard in the US, the first black Briton to do so. He switched to politics and was first elected to the House of Commons for Tottenham in a by-election in 2000, the youngest MP at the time at the age of 27. He was soon promoted to junior minister by Tony Blair, spending eight years in various government roles.
In opposition, he was best known as a social justice activist. So it was a surprise in Westminster when Starmer appointed him to his front bench as shadow foreign secretary.
Lammy told BBC’s Newscast this week that Starmer said to him: “Look, David, you’ve got the links in America.” Lammy remained a frequent visitor to the US after studying and also working there, and had built up friendships with senior figures ranging from former US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice to Barack Obama, whom he got to know before he became president in 2008.
[ Donald Trump asks arch protectionist Robert Lighthizer to run US trade policyOpens in new window ]
In 2018, however, he made a series of sharp comments about Trump, then in the middle of his divisive first term as US president. As well as slagging off his hair, he also called him “deluded, dishonest, xenophobic, narcissistic” and a “woman hating, neo-Nazi, sympathising sociopath”.
Confronted this week with the comments on Newscast, Lammy said they were “old news ... There are things I know now that I didn’t know back then.” He said Trump had never mentioned them when he attended a two-and-a-half hour dinner with Trump and Starmer in New York in September. Trump was a “gracious host”, he said, as exemplified by his offer of extra chicken.
“He is someone we can build a relationship with in our national interest because we must,” said Lammy.
He may well have got away with the comments. Chris Ruddy, the Newsmax journalist who is a close Trump confidante and spoke with the president-elect hours after his victory, told Times Radio this week that Trump “likes Lammy ... He knows that he’s been critical of him in the past so I don’t think that’s a bar”.
- Listen to our Inside Politics Podcast for the latest analysis and chat
- Sign up for push alerts and have the best news, analysis and comment delivered directly to your phone
- Find The Irish Times on WhatsApp and stay up to date