David Lammy: Obama Good friend Who May Quickly Share World Stage With Trump

Few British politicians have American ties as deep as these of David Lammy, who is about to turn out to be Britain’s international secretary if the opposition Labour Social gathering wins the approaching election, because the polls recommend it’ll.

A son of Guyanese immigrants who grew up poor in working-class London, he spent summers with kinfolk in Brooklyn and Queens, working at Con Edison, earlier than incomes a grasp’s diploma at Harvard Legislation Faculty and befriending Barack Obama, for whom he canvassed in Chicago throughout his first presidential marketing campaign.

But now, on the cusp of changing into Britain’s chief diplomat, Mr. Lammy finds himself going through an unsure, even doubtlessly hostile, American political panorama. President Biden and the Democrats, with whom Mr. Lammy has cultivated a deep community of contacts, are combating to carry off a resurgent Donald J. Trump.

Having been chosen by the Labour chief, Keir Starmer, partly due to his trans-Atlantic credentials, Mr. Lammy, 51, is scrambling to construct ties with Republicans and, extra challengingly, with these round Mr. Trump. It’s a really completely different American institution from the Democratic one he is aware of so nicely.

Would Mr. Lammy pay a go to to Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trump’s Palm Seaside property, as David Cameron, Britain’s present international secretary, did two weeks ago to foyer the previous president on army support to Ukraine?

“Of course,” he mentioned in an interview this week in Portcullis Home, the parliamentary workplace constructing throughout the road from Huge Ben. Noting that he was headed quickly to New York and Washington, he mentioned, “I’m happy to talk to whomever the American people decide they want to run the country.”

That’s a time-tested reply for any international politician throughout an American election 12 months, particularly one from a celebration that has held a double-digit polling lead over the governing Conservatives for 18 months. However not like many Europeans, who regard Mr. Trump with a mixture of concern and bemusement, Mr. Lammy genuinely appears to imagine he can discover widespread floor with these in Mr. Trump’s orbit.

He has held conferences with former Trump officers like Mike Pompeo, who served as secretary of state and C.I.A. director, and Robert C. O’Brien, who was Mr. Trump’s final nationwide safety adviser. And he has struck up a relationship with Senator J.D. Vance, the Ohio Republican and enthusiastic Trump convert.

Mr. Vance’s best-selling memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy,” he mentioned, bore parallels to his personal story, rising up with a single mom and an absent, alcoholic father, in Tottenham, the place race riots convulsed the streets. Mr. Lammy, whose memoir is titled “Out of the Ashes,” mentioned Mr. Vance’s ebook “reduced me to tears.”

“I said to J.D., ‘Look, we’ve got different politics, but we’re both quite strong Christians and we both share quite a tough upbringing,’” mentioned Mr. Lammy, who could be Britain’s second Black international secretary after James Cleverly, a Conservative.

The problem for Mr. Lammy is that he shares extra with Mr. Obama, who was just a few years forward of him at Harvard. The 2 males, who met 20 years in the past at a gathering for Black alumni, had dinner when Mr. Obama visited London final month. In Mr. Obama’s Washington workplace hangs a portrait of the previous president made by Mr. Lammy’s spouse, Nicola Inexperienced, an artist who chronicled his 2008 marketing campaign.

Certainly one of Mr. Obama’s former advisers, Benjamin J. Rhodes, launched Mr. Lammy to different Democratic lawmakers and has additionally turn out to be a good friend. Within the occasion of a Labour authorities and a second Biden administration, he predicted, “You would see a much more aligned U.S. and U.K. relationship.”

However Mr. Rhodes mentioned Mr. Lammy’s gregarious method and pragmatic politics would give him at the least a combating probability with a Trump administration. “I think he believes that through force of personality, he could develop relationships in that circle,” Mr. Rhodes mentioned.

For now, Mr. Lammy is set to not offend. Requested about Mr. Trump’s current assertion that he would inform the Russians to do “whatever the hell they want” to any NATO member that didn’t pay its justifiable share of the alliance’s prices, Mr. Lammy seized on the reference to burden sharing.

“Is Donald Trump right?” he mentioned. “100 percent.”

Too many NATO nations, Mr. Lammy mentioned, nonetheless failed to satisfy the alliance’s goal of army spending equal to 2 p.c of gross home product (Britain spends roughly 2.2 p.c). The Labour Social gathering has vowed to lift that to 2.5 p.c, and Mr. Lammy accused the Conservatives of bleeding Britain’s armed forces right down to a dimension that they had not seen for the reason that Napoleonic period.

“I recognize in Donald Trump an ability to use language to concentrate minds,” he mentioned.

Different Labour veterans bear no illusions in regards to the chemistry between a Labour authorities and Mr. Trump. The previous president clashed with Theresa May, a Conservative prime minister, although he had higher relations with Boris Johnson and praised the present prime minister, Rishi Sunak, for searching for to water down Britain’s climate goals. Mr. Cameron, years earlier than he visited Mar-a-Lago, referred to as Mr. Trump’s risk to ban Muslims from getting into the USA “divisive, stupid and wrong.”

“A Trump government would be very difficult for a Labour government, but it would also be difficult for a Rishi Sunak government,” mentioned Jonathan Powell, who served as chief of employees to a Labour prime minister, Tony Blair.

With the chance of a turbulent stretch in trans-Atlantic relations, Mr. Lammy is emphasizing Britain’s personal neighborhood. In a brand new essay in Foreign Affairs magazine that lays out a international coverage based mostly on what he calls “progressive realism,” he mentioned Britain wanted to concentrate on rebuilding its safety ties with the European Union, which have withered within the aftermath of Brexit.

Mending fences with Europe, Mr. Lammy mentioned, was essential no matter whether or not Mr. Biden or Mr. Trump wins in November as a result of the USA is more and more preoccupied by its rivalry with China.

“For that reason, the U.K. must play its part here in Europe,” Mr. Lammy mentioned, including that Labour was higher positioned than the Conservatives to rebuild belief due to European suspicion of Brexiteers like Mr. Johnson. “Europe is keen to turn the page. The United States is keen for the U.K. to turn the page.”

Whilst their strategic priorities diverge, the USA and Britain stay lashed collectively in battle zones just like the Center East. British and American warplanes collectively helped repel Iran’s aerial assault on Israel.

Britain’s place on the Israel-Gaza battle mirrors that of the USA, and Labour has stayed largely in sync with the Conservatives, regardless of strain from its left wing to take a more durable line on Israel. Mr. Lammy described the situations in Gaza as “hell on earth,” however he has not referred to as for Britain to droop arms gross sales to Israel, as have authorized consultants and a few members of Parliament.

Whereas Mr. Lammy mentioned he was “very concerned” that Israel could be violating worldwide regulation, which might set off a suspension of arms exports, he didn’t need to get forward of a judgment by the federal government’s legal professionals.

“I’m also very conscious that I and Keir Starmer might be officeholders” throughout the coming weeks, Mr. Lammy mentioned, pointing to hypothesis that if the Conservatives endure dire losses in native elections in early Could, Mr. Sunak would possibly call a general election.

As he contemplated that chance, Mr. Lammy’s ideas got here again to the USA, the place he mentioned the struggles of civil rights leaders just like the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the election of Mr. Obama symbolized a bend within the ethical arc towards racial justice that has reworked Britain as nicely.

“If I have the privilege of becoming foreign minister,” he mentioned, “I’m very conscious that I’ll be the first — it almost makes me emotional as I say it — the first foreign secretary who is the descendant of enslaved people.”