3 hours ago
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UK foreign secretary says US election result ‘not wholly bad’ and Britain should not underestimate opportunities of the next four years
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 by describing his comments as “old news”.
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.
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.
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