The foreign secretary has dismissed his previous criticism of Donald Trump as “old news” and insisted he would be able to find “common ground” with the president-elect.
When he was a backbench MP in 2018, David Lammy described Trump as a “tyrant” and “a woman-hating, neo-Nazi-sympathising sociopath”.
But in his first interview since Trump’s victory, he told the BBC’s Newscast podcast the president-elect was “someone that we can build a relationship with in our national interest”.
Lammy praised his election campaign as “very well run”, adding that: “I felt in my bones that there could be a Trump presidency.”
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In 2019, ahead of Trump’s state visit to the UK, Lammy also posted that the then-president was “deluded, dishonest, xenophobic, narcissistic” and “no friend of Britain”.
Pressed over whether he had changed his mind, Lammy said the remarks were “old news” and you would “struggle to find any politician” who had not said some “pretty ripe things” about Trump in the past.
“In that period, particularly with people on Twitter, lots of things were said about Donald Trump,” he said.
"I think that what you say as a backbencher and what you do wearing the real duty of public office are two different things.
What do you expect him to say and do? Resign because someone in another country got a job and you’re going to have to deal with them? This is what grownups do. They disagree and try to find common ground where possible even if it’s the thinnest strip of dirt, and you go from there. Where he went wrong was being super outspoken in the first place. Politicians should know better. As someone who will have to deal with foreign politicians all the time the last thing you do is slag them off, even if they’re in the opposition party and not actual currently in power.