Trump unconcerned about critical comments, says Lammy – UK politics live | Politics

It is quite a week for comebacks. Jonathan Powell’s return to No 10 is not up there with Donald Trump getting back to the White House, but it is big news for anyone interested Whitehall machinery. Powell started his career as a Foreign Office civil servant but he started working for Tony Blair when Blair was Labour leader in 1995 and, unlike Sue Gray, who made a similar leap into party politics, Powell survived as chief of staff for Blair’s entire premiership.

Now he’s back – as the new national security adviser.

In a statement announcing his appointment, Keir Starmer said:

Jonathan has devoted his career to protecting the interests of the country, having served for 17 years as a diplomat in the Foreign Office and 10 years as chief of staff in No 10, and I am delighted to appoint him to this important role.

Together with his experience helping to negotiate the Belfast (Good Friday) agreement and work on some of the world’s most complex conflicts, he is uniquely qualified to advise the government on tackling the challenges ahead and engage with counterparts across the globe to protect and advance UK interests.

I would also like to thank Sir Tim Barrow [the outgoing national security adviser] for his service and the support and advice he has given me. He has helped steer the national security community through some of the most challenging times in recent history, demonstrating throughout his outstanding commitment to public service and to the safety and security of this country. I’ve no doubt he will continue to play a positive role on these issues in the future.

Powell has already been working for the Starmer government. He was appointed as a special envoy dealing with Mauritius and the Chagos Islands, and within weeks of his appointment the government was able to finalise a deal that transferred sovereignty of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius while ensuring that the US-UK military base at Diego Garcia remains under UK control for at least another 99 years.

In an interview with the Today programme this morning Sir Alex Younger, a former head of MI6, said that in any talks about an end to the Ukraine war, Britain should be particularly opposed to moves to leave Ukraine in the future neutralised.

Discussing the impact of Donald Trump’s election on Ukraine’s future, Younger said:

[Trump] will attempt to engineer a rapid solution, but he’s been pulled in two directions.

There will be a land swap. That is a terrible thing for the people who end up living under Russian rule. But fundamentally, it’s not the main argument. The main argument is whether Ukraine is a western or eastern country in future.

Trump’s advisers, on the one hand, are saying that Ukraine should be forced into neutrality, so basically back into the bosom of [Russian President Vladimir] Putin.

Others are talking about the need to do a land swap, but then reinforce its military and economic capabilities, and we need to make sure we are compounding that second argument.

David Lammy told Newscast that Donald Trump would not want an outcome to the Ukraine war that would leave Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, “emboldened”.

For the British government, and many other European governments, one of the biggest worries about a Trump presidency is that Trump would halt US support for Ukraine, forcing Kyiv to negotiate a peace settlement that would in practice amount to a Russian victory.

While not writing off this possibility, Lammy suggested that having Trump as US president might not be as bad for Ukraine as some people have claimed.

He said that Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the Ukrainian president, has tried to build a relationship with Trump and he said that Trump’s approach to foreign policy was “peace through strength”.

Donald Trump signs up to a way of doing foreign policy, which is peace through strength. That is the starting point. Donald Trump will not want a situation where the US troops that he’s got in Europe rise substantially because of further war or threats in Europe. He will not want Putin to leave emboldened from this war.

Lammy says the British governments view is that Russia should withdraw from the parts of Ukraine that it is occupying and its assessment is that Putin will not be willing to accept a peace deal on these terms. But Lammy also suggested that Trump might have some influence over Russia. He explained:

I do recognise that Donald Trump and the Republicans around him have a relationship that goes back with Putin longer than my own in fact. And they will seek to use leverage that they have. So this is a discussion that we will be engaged in.

Asked if he thought Trump would be able to end the war in 24 hours, as he has claimed, Lammy just replied: “We’ll know the answer to that on January the 22nd [the day after Trump’s first full day in office].”

Lammy also insisted that the British government remains “solidly behind Ukraine”.

This is what David Lammy, the foreign secretary, told the BBC’s Newscast podcast about how the government would respond to Donald Trump’s plan to impose tariffs of at least 10% on imports from Britain and other countries. Economists say this could halve UK growth.

Asked if the government would seek an exemption, Lammy said he hoped Trump would realise his plan would be counter-productive. He said:

We will seek to ensure and to get across to the United States – and I believe that they would understand this – that hurting your closest allies cannot be in your medium or long term interests.

Earlier this week Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, suggested that the tariff plans proposed by Trump during the election campaign could be watered down following British lobbying.

In his interview with the BBC’s Newscast podcast, David Lammy, the foreign secretary, was asked about the dinner he and Keir Starmer had with Donald Trump in New York at the end of September. An account of the dinner published in the Sunday Times described it as cordial, and said that Trump offered Lammy a second helping, suggesting that this was evidence Trump did not hold a grudge about the multiple hostile comments from Lammy in the past.

Asked if Trump brought up those comments at the dinner, Lammy said:

Not even vaguely. I’ve got to say, I found him to be a very gracious host.

Asked if Trump really gave him a second helping, Lammy said:

He did offer me a second portion of chicken. He was very generous, very gracious, very keen to make sure that we felt relaxed and comfortable in his surroundings. He was funny. He was warm about the UK. Very warm about the royal family. I’ve got to tell you, [he] loves Scotland …

I suppose what I’m saying is I’ve met the man and in the end diplomacy – actually, just common manners – is in particular building relationships [with] people. And I think he’s someone that we can build a relationship with in our national interest because we must.

At that point Chris Mason, the BBC’s political editor, said that Lammy’s past comments including calling Trump a “woman hating, neo-Nazi, sympathising sociopath” who was “a profound threat to the international order that has been the foundation of Western progress for so long”. Mason suggests comments like that had to be a problem, because Trump might weaponise them in the future. But Lammy replied:

He didn’t seem to think it mattered a few weeks ago.

Asked if he still agreed with these views, Lammy did not disown them. Instead he said:

Look, I think that what you say as a backbencher and what you do wearing the the real duty of public office are two different things. And I am foreign secretary. There are things I know now that I didn’t know back then, and that’s the truth of it.

Good morning. As the Labour government tries to work out what having Donald Trump back in the White House will mean for Britain, and what it must do in response, David Lammy is absolutely at the centre of that debate. Partly that is because he is foreign secretary, and partly it’s because (in a crowded field) he is probably the British MP who has been most outspoken and critical about Trump in the past.

Lammy has now given a long interview to the BBC’s Newscast podcast to discuss these issues. And, as Jamie Grierson reports, he dismissed suggestions that his past diatribes about Trump would damage the relationship now, describing his comments as “old news”.

But Lammy also pushed back against suggestions that Trump’s election would be wholly negative and he said it could also present “opportunities” for Britain.

Asked if he accepted that Trump’s election had made life “harder” for the UK government, Lammy said they would certainly be “different”. But, when it was put to him that he was just being diplomatic, Lammy did not accept that. He said he wanted to make two points.

The first thing is to say that, on the whole, foreign policy is less partisan than domestic policy. And that is the case in the American system as much as it is in our system.

The second thing to say is, yes, there will be differences and there will be areas where we disagree actually, I suspect.

But there are also opportunities and we shouldn’t underestimate the opportunities that there will be as well. And we must seize those.

Lammy said he thought Trump was right to argue that Europe needed to spend more on defence. Asked about claims that the British economy would be harmed by the tariffs that Trump plans to impose, Lammy suggested that would be counter-productive for the US, and he suggested that the UK might be able to get exemptions. He also said that in foreign policy there would be areas where the UK and a Trump administration had common interests.

In a world where there’s war in Europe, where there’s a tremendous loss of life in the Middle East, where the US and the UK genuinely have a special relationship, where we got someone who’s about to become again the US president who has experience of doing the job last time around, we will forge common interests. We will agree and align on much and, where we disagree, we’ll have those conversations as well, most often in private.

I will post more from the interview soon.

Otherwise, it looks like a relatively quiet day. Parliament is in recess. Ed Davey, the Lib Dem leader, is due to be talking about Ukraine during a visit later. And the Reform UK Welsh conference is taking place in Newport, where Nigel Farage is due to speak at 5pm.

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