Lawyer, descendant of slaves and friend, among others, of former US President Barack Obama is the new Foreign Secretary in Keir Starmer’s government, David Lammy.
Known for his outspokenness, Lamy, 51, has said that the history of his ancestors, who were slaves in 19th century Guyana on sugar plantations, will influence the way he carries out his duties.
“I will take with incredible seriousness the responsibility that I will have the first Secretary of State, descendant of the slave trade”he stated recently.
David Lammy has been Labour’s foreign affairs chief for two years and has made more than 40 visits abroad, promoting his own vision of British diplomacy, based on a doctrine he calls “progressive realism”. It combines the pragmatic approach adopted by British Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin in the late 1940s with the moral idealism of Robin Cook in the 1990s. The former was involved in the establishment of NATO after the Second World War, while the latter oversaw the successful interventions in Kosovo and Sierra Leone, before leaving Tony Blair’s government over the intervention in Iraq.
This approach involves “seeing the world as it is, not as we would like it to be,” said Lammy, who said British diplomacy “needs to rediscover the art of grand strategy” after leaving the European Union. He advocated closer cooperation with the “27”, continued support for Ukraine and the creation of a Palestinian state as soon as conditions allow.
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David Lammy was born in London in 1972, the son of parents who emigrated from Guyana to the United Kingdom. His childhood was marked by his father’s flight, leaving his mother to raise their five children alone.
“I never saw him again. I always felt a void in my life and I’m not the only one,” he wrote in the Guardian newspaper in 2013, in a series of articles about the importance of fathers in the lives of their children.
He grew up in Tottenham, north London, and has been an elected MP since 2000. In the late 1990s, he became the first black Briton to study at Harvard Law School and befriended Barack Obama at a black alumni event. His wife, artist Nicola Green, documented Obama’s 2018 campaign in a series of portraits.
When first elected in 2000, aged 27, Lammy was the youngest MP ever elected to the House of Commons. He subsequently held various ministerial posts in the governments of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown.
David Lammy is a staunch supporter of the “special relationship” between London and Washington, but he has had to assure people that he would be able to work with Donald Trump if the Republican former president returns to the White House in November’s election. Britain’s new foreign secretary described the former US president as a “sociopath with neo-Nazi sympathies” who “hates women”. But he later said his remarks had been “misinterpreted” and promised to take a pragmatic approach. According to several British media outlets, his team has been in contact with Trump’s for several weeks.
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