David Lammy: ‘I’ve been loyal to every Labour PM – I’ll be loyal to the next’

When Keir Starmer made his tearful resignation speech outside No 10 last week, David Lammy was one of only a handful of cabinet ministers standing beside him. “Loyalty and trust and conviction are underrated values, but important values in politics,” he says.

“As deputy PM, constitutionally, you’re there to stand alongside the prime minister, and I have worked with him very close up in the last year, so I wanted to be supportive. It was a poignant moment, but I want to be able to look back on my own self and be proud, and be able to look my own children and grandchildren in the eye, so that’s why I was there right to the end.”

Lammy talked to Starmer several times over the course of last weekend as he agonised about whether to quit. “I’m not going to share what I said to him, but he knew that he had my support in whatever decision he came to, and of course, he also had my counsel and my own assessment of the moment.”

Those are, of course, two very different things. “There’s no doubt about it; the size of Andy Burnham’s victory and the confidence that it’s given lots of Labour colleagues across the country facing the Reform threat, was hugely significant.” Lammy does not use the word inevitable but he says: “I think [Keir] came to the right decision.”

Now Lammy is supporting Burnham for the leadership. On Tuesday, he helped facilitate the private meeting between the prime minister and the new MP for Makerfield. It was hosted at the deputy prime minister’s official Westminster residence, 1 Carlton Gardens.

“I’ve known Andy Burnham for over 25 years in politics; we were both – along with James Purnell [the new Downing Street chief of staff] – proteges of the late Tessa Jowell. We have both been Christian socialists in the Labour movement. I’ve been loyal to every Labour prime minister – I’ll be loyal to the next.” Lammy spent an hour one-to-one with Burnham during the byelection campaign and hopes he will still have a cabinet job. The likely next prime minister “will want to draw on the talent and the breadth of the parliamentary Labour party”, Lammy says.

We are speaking in Gdańsk, where Lammy is representing the prime minister at the Ukraine Recovery Conference in the Polish city. It is almost as if the deputy prime minister is auditioning for a return to the role of foreign secretary. “I would expect the shape of foreign policy to be the same,” he says of the leadership change. “Andy Burnham will be absolutely ironclad, I have absolutely no doubt, in his support for Ukraine.”

The news that Jonathan Powell is staying on as national security adviser will also reassure international allies. Burnham has let it be known that he plans to spend less time travelling abroad than Starmer when he moves into No 10. “All prime ministers are doing more in foreign policy, and that is because foreign policy and domestic policy are so interlinked,” Lammy says.

“The cost of living crisis has been exacerbated by the war in Ukraine, by a global pandemic, but also by the closure of the Strait of Hormuz… Clearly, Andy will have a strong domestic focus, and I am in no doubt that he will rely on those of us who have put a lot of effort over the last few years into foreign policy.”

Lammy believes the probable next prime minister will bring a different style to No 10. “Andy Burnham is a very relational politician, a personable politician; he’s a good communicator – he has an ease and a political agility,” he says. “All politicians bring their style to the job; I think he’ll bring a deftness and agility.”

This will, in his view, help Burnham have a good relationship with Donald Trump. “I think, very much like here [in the UK], people around the world will find him personable and easy to get along with.”

The US president, however, has already condemned Burnham as an “extreme liberal” but Lammy says: “There’s an intense rhetoric with Trump, and lots of different kinds of politicians are on the receiving end of that. You saw it recently with Giorgia Meloni [who has said the president’s “constant unprovoked attacks” on her are “senseless”], so I’ll keep my advice to Andy private, but I think he’s adept enough to deal with that.”

Lammy called JD Vance to tell him he was wrong after the US vice-president blamed the murder of 18-year-old university student Henry Nowak in Southampton on the “mass invasion” of migrants. “I don’t recognise two-tier justice as a theme,” the justice secretary says, but he says they are still friends. Vance contacted him to commiserate after Starmer announced he was going.

“You don’t get where I’ve got to, coming from the background that I’ve come from, and not learn how to forge friendships across party lines,” Lammy says. “I’ve told him he was wrong before. He’s told me I was wrong, but we are able to find common ground. We both have a strong Christian faith. We both have mixed heritage families.”

Our interview takes place in a Ukrainian church, where Lammy has been meeting refugees. The walls are painted with exquisite, bright frescoes, and he says the art and architecture show the benefits of multiculturalism. “In the iconography, there are aspects of the Ottoman empire, aspects of the Silk Road, aspects of the Byzantine – all of it influencing western values.”

The refugees show Lammy one of the camouflage nets they have been making out of recycled hessian coffee bags to send to the front line. He is clearly moved, but this week the home secretary, Shabana Mahmood, will table controversial plans to toughen immigration laws. “I think that the support in the UK for those genuinely fleeing war and hardship remains immense, and there’s a lot of support for Ukrainian refugees in the UK,” the deputy prime minister says. “What I think is interesting is that, because of the work of Keir Starmer and his focus on small boats, we have seen an 82% reduction, and you’ve seen the migration debate lower; I think Andy has been pretty consistent and I would expect to see continuity there.”

But Lammy does worry about the rise of the far right. “We’re just a few days after the [10th] anniversary of the murder of [the Labour MP] Jo Cox, and all of us see the vile hate and racism that grips part of our society. I personally spend far less time online now than I did a few years ago, because I don’t think it’s good for my own mental health. The social cohesion aspect of what we have to do in government is very important.”

Burnham has promised to apply the Makerfield test to all policies, but Lammy represents Tottenham, a diverse north London seat where the Greens are more of a threat to Labour than Reform UK. “Of course I want to see progressive voters not peeling off to other parties,” he says. “When you become prime minister, you are absolutely there for the nation, but I think a focus on left-behind communities – communities that feel quite far from Westminster politics – is a strong, resonant theme in an age when many voters feel disconnected from the bubble.”

Photograph by Dan Kitwood/Getty Images