The Rest Is Politics: Leading - 6: David Lammy: The Future of Foreign Policy

Episode Date: February 20, 2023

Is David Lammy the next politician to represent Britain on the global stage? Alastair and Rory speak to the Shadow Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs about his upbringing, the Department for International Development, the Labour Party, tribalism in politics, and the role of foreign policy for Britain today. Instagram: @restispolitics Twitter: @RestIsPolitics TRIP Plus: Become a member of The Rest Is Politics Plus to support the podcast, receive a weekly newsletter, enjoy ad-free listening to both TRIP and Leading, join our Discord chatroom, and receive early access to live show tickets and Question Time episodes. Just head to therestispolitics.com to sign up. Email: [e-mail] Producers: Dom Johnson + Nicole Maslen Exec Producers: Tony Pastor + Jack Davenport Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thanks for listening to The Restis Politics. Sign up to the Restis Politics Plus. To enjoy ad-free listening, receive a weekly newsletter, join our members chat room and gain early access to live show tickets. Just go to therestispolities.com. That's therestispoletics.com. Welcome to another episode of The Restis Politics leading with me, Alistair Campbell. And me, Rory Stewart. Join today by the son of a poor Guyanan immigrant family who made it to Harvard and to the bar. as at various points being labelled the black Blair and the British Obama. A friend of both has a very recognisable laugh to those who know him.

But despite now being firmly a part of the establishment, class has always been at the heart of his politics as MP for one of the poorest parts of the country, Tottenham. Campaign wrong Grenfell, Windrush, Oxford elitism, knife crime drugs. but if Labour win the next election, he's going to be the Foreign Secretary. So David Lammy, welcome, first of all. But tell us a little bit about the journey from son of poor Guyana immigrant family to potentially foreign secretary. Well, thank you for that introduction, which is very sweet and sort of takes me back a bit.

God, the journey. I think, you know, there'll be lots of listeners who can picture being in their village, town, housing estate, miles away from power or the centre of power, feeling quite small, marginal. And that would be a good way to describe growing up in Tottenham in North London, in the 1970s, you know, in an immigrant family, a tough part of London. and rioting in the early 80s. I think it should make it clear that you weren't writing. I wasn't rioting. There was rioting. There were riots.

There were riots. And very serious ones in which a police officer was murdered. And actually at that time, there was quite a lot of stigma attached to growing up in a place like Tottenham. I was kind of precocious. I wouldn't say I was super bright, but I definitely was very ambitious, wanted to succeed, and had absolutely no idea of how to get from there, not so much to where I am today, but even to the university.

You know, just to university would have been nice. But I think because of some amazing teachers, youth workers, and the most amazing mother, my father left us and our family when I was 12 and never saw him again. But she was amazing and leaned on the support of teachers and others that I sort of made my way and absolutely made my way into the kind of Labor tribe, because this was the era of apartheid in South Africa and Margaret Thatcher sort of standing

against Mandela, really. It was the era of Poltax riots. There were quite a lot of recessions in the early 80s, and the economy was faltering. And it was a period where, you know, the Labour Party was losing. Successive elections quite badly. And I remember voting for the first time in 1992, I think it was, and being absolutely sure that Neil Kinnock would win and he didn't and being feeling so let down. Tell us a little bit about your mother. She came from British Guyana, is that right?

So my mother, both my parents came from what was then British Guyana, which is a colony, what was a colony of the embassy? empire that not a lot of people knew about. A lot of listeners have only ever heard of that part of the world because the Jones Town massacre and the phrase, don't drink the Kool-Aid, you know, where people followed Jim Jones to the Guineas rainforest and ended up, you know, well, he ended up murdering them. It's on the north coast of South America, right? It's on the north coast of South, northeast coast of South America, between Brazil just beneath it, next to Venezuela, Suriname on the edge. In many ways, French Guyana, Suriname, what is now Ghana,

you know, could be just one country in a sense. And... Sorry, have you just rewritten the world map? You're not yet Foreign Secretary. Well, it's... You just created a country out of three. Well, these all come out of your ancestors colonising mine. Thank you very much, Anister. And yours, Rory. Tell us a little bit about that history, though. Is it a place you know, do you have relatives there? Why did your mother come to Britain? All this kind of stuff. I'm a dual national. I'm incredibly proud of my Guyanese heritage. I'm there very, very regularly.

I was there at Christmas. My parents were part of that generation that came to the UK after the Second World War, what we call the Windrush generation, you know, all of them coming from the West Indies to rebuild this country, birthed the National Health Service, fix the railways after the Second World War. And in your mother's case, what was she doing? She came towards the back end of the 60s. She was my father's second wife. She was very much a country girl, very shy, Christian woman.

And she worked as, she worked on London Underground at Camden Town Tube Station for many years. She then worked as a care assistant for Harringay Council. and on the side she'd sold Avon makeup and Tupperware. Oh, she was a makeup lady. And the Tupperware, my mum used to have both of those come down. Tupper and Avon makeup ladies. And she was a wonderful, wonderful, wonderful human being. And I'm probably going to get emotional

because she died really too young from ovarian cancer in her 60s. But she had a powerful belief in education, partly because she was very bright, but had been too poor to continue in education much past 14. And she was my best friend. I mean, no doubt about it, she was my best friend. And what about your dad just kind of getting up and going? Has he made any contact with you since you became moderately well known?

So my dad was a bane, charming, funny, bit of a womanizer, but unfortunately an alcoholic. He left when I was 12 to go to America. You know, a lot of immigrants, West Indian immigrants in the 80s, they'd come to Britain, but many of them were moving on to the United States and to Canada where there were bigger opportunities. Anyway, he apparently was going to America to see if there were opportunities for us, but he went to America and really didn't come back and disappeared. He was aware that I had become an MP, and I'm told was very, very, very proud of that. but the truth is he died in 2003 and he died, you know, he died a pauper, really.

And it was a few years later that I went to his grave in the United States and gave him a tombstone and sort of stood by his grave side and explained to him that I forgave him and loved him regardless. You did forgive him. Absolutely. Because, you know, he crumpled at a very tough political time. In the early 80s, he didn't have much work. Alcohol got to him. And I think he died a broken man.

And it's never a good thing to take grudge and stuff with you in life. It doesn't help. So I wanted to, you know, I wanted to do that as much for me as for him. But when you were, for example, campaigning on Windrush, Greenfield, these kind of issues, which are about class and about your background, I mean, there's a kind of personal element there that must be. very, very powerful. Well, there was definitely a moment when I called the urgent question during the emerging windrush scandal. And it was a big moment because the Commonwealth heads of government had gathered in London, if you remember. Theresa May was obviously hugely excited, partly, I think,

because we had left the European Union. She wanted to hold the Commonwealth as this huge important deal. And there was this scandal breaking about the treatment of the those West Indian immigrants. So what happened is the heads of government turned on her. And my urgent question spearheaded it. And absolutely when I stood up and spoke, and it was almost a spiritual moment. It was my parents and sort of speaking through me. It was a very sort of almost a Pentecostal moment. It was an amazing speech. I can remember getting a phone call from the editor of GQ that day. I've just been watching this David Lammy. We've got to do him for GQ. I'm going to come back to some of the things you said in that interview, David.

Okay. Rory. David, you're a, I mean, from this amazing family background, you became an MP unbelievably young. I mean, given, as you said, all the disadvantages you faced, you rocketed through. And I think with the youngest MP in Parliament at the time came in at 28 years old. And although you're only my age, you were a real veteran politician. You know, you were a minister almost 20 years ago now.

And you've been through every time. He didn't enjoy it very much, Roy. You're such a flatterer, Rory. You say it with this sort of big smile, looking so young yourself. I guess, David, one of the things that I'd be interested in, and it's something that interests me in your journey and in Alice's journey, is the oddity of the transition from feeling very angry in the 80s about Thatcher and the Conservative Party into Tony Blair's government, where, I guess if you were Jeremy Corbyn looking at it or you were an outsider looking at it, you might well say that actually Tony Blair and Gordon Brown didn't challenge the fundamental approach which Thatcher and Major had been running with the economy. They didn't really reverse privatization.

They kept taxes low. They didn't really borrow very much. In fact, a lot of the first few years that government were all about trying to stick to conservative spending plans. Gordon Brown with his golden rule where he was going to balance the budget, etc. So that in some ways, the period looking back in history from the early 80s to 2008 was an era of a single economic theory in British politics. It was an era where British GDP per capita was growing fast, productivity was growing fast, and 17 years worth of growth. And you came into that.

How did it feel, I guess, to find yourself as someone who was very idealistic, had been very, very angry with right-wing politics, and to enter a government that was so much a centrist government. not really a government looking back of the left. There's an important part of this story to add to this. I left Tottenham and went to a state boarding school in Peterborough. In the 1980s, you could not get more Middle England than the new town city of Peterborough. That city in so many ways saved my life. It wasn't all easy being at a boarding school where I was the only back,

black child, but Peterborough was full of people who'd left London in search of a better life, got themselves a picket fence, got themselves a semi-detached house, and they were aspiring. And I say that because the people of Peterborough first off put their stock in Margaret Thatcher, who really understood those folk, and then transferred that to Tony Blair, who even better understood those folk. And there has always been a paradox, a dichotomy, I think in me, between being Tottenham and proud, and we could talk about football, for example, but also having an affinity to this new town where I found my voice, literally, I was a cathedral chorister.

Do you still sing very well? Can we just, sorry, just for a second. You were making a very serious point, but you were a chorister. I'm not going to say. Are you long. I am not going to sing for you, Rory. But I do still sing in the parliamentary choir. And you could once sing very beautifully. That was presumably before your voice broke. Was it a problem when your voice broke? I think I still sing. I'm a good tenor. I still sing pretty beautifully now. But

you don't want to do it here now. But yes. You won't rise to the challenge. I found my voice in Peterborough Cathedral. The important point that I wanted to get to, because this is important to understand. I said that we'd lost successive elections. 1983, 1987, 1992, the Labour Party. And I felt led up the hill in each of those elections.

I had these amazing socialist teachers in Tottenham and some in Peterborough. And what I began to realise is every time we lost, they were fine. But I wasn't, and the folk back home in Tottenham were not fine.

So I suppose what I'm saying, Rory, is in that sense, a centre-ground, centre-left politics has always been my natural home. I think also, David, just for the sake of rebuttal, Rory, I think we have to point out that the new Labour government, I think you might have said this yourself, David, but I'll say it for you, reversed the long-term youth and mass unemployment. Absolutely. And showed that the state could do that and reverse the underinvestment in public services. Absolutely. And showed that there is a better way forward on Europe.

There's lots of the Thatcherite model that was reversed. Lifted a million kids out of poverty. Gave us the minimum wage. I mean, the list goes on. Roy, what were you doing during that period? David, just on the peter for a point, did this develop a very deep love of classical music? Presumably you were singing a lot of classical music

there in the cathedral choir. Is that right? Choral music, very much so. Choral classical music. Yes, to classical music. And quite sort of, you know, I've got quite. quite eclectic taste. I quite like folk, whether it's, you know, country music from the United States or Irish folk or Scottish folk or folk music from Burkino Faso. It's that earthy music that

comes from somewhere parochial, almost, local, and it's got a sort of quality to it, a sort of singular quality that in a way is a bit like choral music. So I've got quite eclectic taste. It's a good broad way of saying that, Rory. Now, you're, as we say, going to be foreign secretary, if there's a Labour government, one assumes you will be. Do you know something I don't know?

Well, I might do. I might have heard a few whispers around the place, but, you know, that's for me, David. But how do you make foreign policy interesting and relevant to the sort of people you were just talking about there in Peterborough who are probably at the moment worrying about cost of living, worrying about their economic future of the country and so forth?

But, you know, Rory and I, we talk a lot about foreign policy. We're both interested in foreign policy. We actually genuinely think that foreign policy matters for everyone, not just for those who kind of think about it. So how do you make it interesting? And I guess the second part of that question, if I had to say, you know, I'm going to give you four pillars of a foreign policy, what are they? So that's a long question, but let's start.

The first thing to say is that foreign policy today, is domestic, energy prices, cost of living, the climate emergency, the race to renewables. All of these issues are foreign issues, hugely affecting domestic policy and people's everyday lives. The war in Ukraine, people can see, and obviously the fact that we in the Labour Party have, you know, stood absolutely shoulder-shoulder with the Ukrainians in their fight against imperialism, but they can see how that has had an effect on energy prices. We're living at a time of these rising China, particularly affecting the global economy and the consequences of that, if you like the United States, having another superpower to deal with in the global community, the importance of countries like

India, Turkey, but also issues become weaponized. You know, many Mays Putin has weaponized immigration, his bombing of Syria, the migration that we're seeing across Europe, much of it stems from his domestic policy to affect Europe. We're living in a world where artificial intelligence, quantum, in the hands of authoritarian states, can have huge consequences for us. So foreign policy has come home. And we have to underpin that with understanding security and prosperity for our domestic population in the way that we pursue foreign policy.

the principle that I want to assert is that, yes, I do think actually that phrase, you're now going to bristle at this, Alistair, take back control. Dude, for those listeners who are listening, not watching, this was Alistair reaching across and trying to grab David's hand. No, no, I'm all in favor of taking back control. I'm all in favor of it. It chined. It's not the way they tried to do it.

Absolutely. Totally agree with you. So it chimed. It worked because it chimed with this sense of people feeling out of control in the midst of globalisation. But they were wrong in the way they then pursued that. You don't pursue that by going it alone. And if you like, the ultimate folly of that nonsense of going it alone in the world, Rory, was Liz Trust quasi-Quatac forgetting that we are interdependent. We were, of course, hoping you were going to say the ultimate folly was Brexit.

it. You sort of held back from that, David, a little bit there. Do you want to give us a little bit on that? I'll come back to that in a second. So Britain has to be connected to the world again. Of course, the Europeans are our allies and friends. Of course they are. Of course we should not be introducing bills in Parliament that break the rule of law or two years after we've signed it. Trust levels with the Irish, with the Americans is at an all-time low because of the undermining of the Good Friday Agreement. And on that Brexit, the fact that we're now in a position where we haven't even got structured dialogue with the European Union, where we publish strategies like the integrated review, and we don't even name the European Union, is absurd. And a Labour government

would change that. Of course it would. We'll come back to Brexit a bit more in a bit. And Alice will remind you a little bit of the GQ interview that you did with him. I think there's one thing that does worry me, right at the center of what you're saying, it sounds very much like Joe Biden and Jake Sullivan two years ago. This was very much the U.S. vision of foreign policy that they needed to locate it much more in the domestic. And that had a catastrophic impact on U.S. involvement in Africa and, of course, most dramatically of all, in Afghanistan. That's really what drove the completely unnecessary, reckless, futile withdrawal from Afghanistan was essentially giving up on the idea of a more complicated, thoughtful idea of US global influence.

Everything was being drawn in. It's a form of isolationism, which in a sense is really a liberal left version of a sort of Donald Trump version of the world. America first. What matters is the voter at home. What matters is the money at home. And it's largely giving up on any vision of a broader moral or strategic purpose internationally. Rory, that is a very, very good question. I think it's, there's. are layers to that question. The withdrawal from Afghanistan was without doubt a very low moment in global Western politics, which will have significant consequences for Afghanistan, and I suspect significant consequences for the region in the years ahead. And it's important

to, you know, the UK is also in the frame in relation to how that withdrawal was handled. But I think there are a number of things going on in the US, and some of them would be mirrored in a Labour government. The first thing is you have had this extraordinary race to net zero from the Democrats. The Inflation Reduction Act is without doubt a major contribution to getting the United States into the correct place by 2030. We have nothing commensurate here in the United Kingdom. in fact worse, we had Rishi Sunak suggesting he wasn't even going to go to COP 27, that's how low

we have got in relation to climate. But you are right, that should not mean that we are withdrawing from the alleviation of poverty across much of the developing world. I have to say, I think if you spoke to Samantha Power, she wouldn't recognise your caricature, but what we have here in the UK

is precisely that. We've had a departure from 0.7, we had the closure of the Department for International Development, which of this course you are hugely familiar with, which was, I think, has badly, badly damaged our reputation in the world. And of the 11.5 billion that we are spending on international development, 7 billion is being spent in the UK. And very sadly, a couple billion of that is being spent effectively on hotel bills and housing refugees. So there are some real issues here in the UK. I don't think recognising that foreign policy is domestic, dealing with the issues that arise from energy and

other things consequently means that you withdraw from the global community. Quite, quite the opposite is the Labour vision and the vision that I set out in Chatham House last week. But when Rory and I spoke to Keir Stama before Christmas, he was pretty clear. 0.7% of GDP on international aid and development, we've got to get back there, and there was a commitment to restoring diffid as an independent department. I'm sensing you're kind of trying to walk that back a bit. Well, of course we're committed to 0.7. I mean, you know, we pushed and voted for that as a statutory position for the United Kingdom back in 2015. We meant it. It's our party that led on debt relief coming out of Glen Eagles,

sustainability goals, and of course the establishment of Diffid. What it is right to say is that I think that there is some recognition. I mean, Rory, you'd better to speak to this, but there's some recognition, I think, in conservative ranks, that what's happened to international development has been a disaster. That's why Andrew Mitchell was brought into the government. He said himself that what he met in the early, F-C-D-O was pretty shocking. He set about fixing it. They're changing structures and trying to make it work.

We've got two years probably before we get to a general election. We don't quite know where we're going to end up. And it's true. Is it not a given that the Labor manifesto will include a commitment to reestablishing? I think it's a given that we'll have a new model and it's a given that it will be, that independence will be a key component of that. it is true to say that there are other models in Germany, Scandinavia, the United States, other than an independent government. And both of you have been in government long enough to know that the machinery of government changes can cause problems, unintended consequences. I mean, this is obviously going to be very, very disappointing for many, many listeners,

obviously particularly the kind of people that... Hang on, why, Rory, why? Because when I came back from doing the interview with Alistair, And Kierstammer and I went to see friends and colleagues around the world, heads of major age agencies, ambassadors. The first thing they said was that was so exciting to get that clear commitment to the restoration of DFID as an independent department. And a commitment that as soon as you come in, it'll be 0.7%. And since then, there has been such, such sadness. I mean, my phone is full of senior UN officials, senior people from big aid organizations saying,

you've got to push David on this. And frankly, it's one of the things that would stop me from voting Labour, your refusal to commit to 0.7% and the independent diffid. Rory, Rory, you've been around long enough to know that there is a genuinely sincere commitment to 0.7, without doubt. But you also know that two years out of an election, Rachel Reeves doing her job, hasn't laid out the fundamentals of our fiscal position and therefore you have a commitment to get to 0.7. But given we had, I don't know how many budgets did we have last year, the economy's all over the place, it's very, very difficult

to say precisely when we will deliver that at this stage. So just to remind people, Spain is on 0.2. France, I think, is on 0.4 heading towards You're sounding like 204. And Germany's on 0.6. No, but it is just to say that we want to get to 0.7. Labor, of course, is committed to getting to 0.7. But let's not pretend that there isn't a fiscal environment that we're currently in.

That is something quite different to what Keir said. You'd accept that's a different position. The position has evolved since then. I'm not sure that is. I think that he's as committed as I. We're all committed to getting to 0.7. The question is how quickly can we get there? And it may turn out to be quicker than we're worried about at this point.

And as to diffid, we are absolutely committed to an independent model. The US model isn't independent, David. It's not an independent model. Well, no, it's got to be independent. I think that's important. Independent from the foreign office. It's not plugged in as a form of foreign policy. It cannot be what it is now, which is transactional and totally dependent on the short term of foreign policy.

rather than the long term of sustainability and poverty alleviation, absolutely committed to that. And it may well be a new government department, but we've got quite a lot of flux going on. So I'm just being honest about what's happening at the moment in the FCDO. One of the things that you raised there, which is heartbreaking, is, as you say, the fact that if the 11 billion, nearly 7 billion is being spent in the UK, Will you at least commit that when you come into office,

even if you're not spending 0.7%, that you'll make sure that the money is spent outside the UK and you're going to stop this game of pretending to deliver overseas development and keeping two-thirds fit inside Britain? I am very committed to that, yes. Very committed to that. Because I totally recognise that on the figures that they are currently,

Britain effectively is absenting itself from malaria, from HIV, from girls' education. And from poverty, David, because... Well, all of that drives poverty. But sadly, people are not talking enough about poverty. There's a lot of talk about tropical diseases. There's a second thing I would also say. When I came into this job back in November, the big debate was about us in the West, you know, three, four COVID vaccinations, why had so many countries in Africa failed to even have one?

I think there is a new debate, Rory, and I think that's about partnership, genuine partnership. I think the question should have been, how is UK science contributing to assisting Africa having its own capacity to manufacture its vaccines? And I'm very keen to get into that territory as well. Right then. We'll be back in a second. So let's just take a quick break. Hi everybody, it's Dominic Samarach here from The Rest is History. Now, some of you may have heard me on your show, The Rest is Politics, when Rory was away, and I was filling in and enjoying Alastair Campbell's tremendous banter. And I'm back to tell you about our new series on The Rest Is History,

which is all about Britain in the 1970s, a period with a lot of uncanny resemblances to our own. So right now we're living through a moment when oil shocks generated by war in the Middle East, are rippling through the world economy, when Britain feels like it's sunk in a bit of a malaise, people are arguing about Europe, the government has got a few issues with the trade unions, and we have a kind of, I suppose you'd say governing elite, a kind of political class that is really struggling to come to terms with all of these issues, and people are asking if Britain is governable at all. So there are a lot of parallels between that Britain that I'm describing, which is our Britain and the Britain of the mid-1970s. So in this series that's coming

out on the rest is history, we're looking at these and other issues. We'll be talking about the rise of Margaret Thatcher, obviously a colossal figure in our political life even now, whether you love her or loathe her. We'll be talking about the very first Brexit referendum of 1975, a subject that I'm sure Rory and Alistair will have strong opinions about. We'll be talking about the fall of the Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson. And we'll be talking about one of of the grimest moments in Britain's economic history, the moment in 1976 when we had to go cap in hand, as people said at the time, to the International Monetary Fund, the IMF, for a then record bailout. Now, if that sounds good to you, how could it not sound good to you? Of course it

sounds good to you. We have a clip for you to listen to at the end of this episode. And if you want to hear more, just search for The Rest is History wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome back, Alastair and I are here with the rest of politics leading and David Lammy. Now, can we move to the elephant in the room of British politics right now? The B word or the B word? The B word, Brexit. So when I got that phone call from GQ to rush to the House of Commons and talk to this amazing guy, David Lavi, who made this incredible speech about windrush.

You're on the backbenchers. And Jeremy Corbyn was the leader of the Labour Party. and we talked about Brexit. And you said this. What we're seeing is a tyranny. This is Brexit. This was the using of the will of the people argument, etc. It's bound to end in deep economic problems for many poor and working people.

So I said, why is Labor not standing up to it more? And you said, Labour should be internationalist and should stand up to some of the forces behind Brexit, which are racist and xenophobic. And when we talked about voting for the deal that was then on the table, you said, I said it was madness from the beginning. and I still think it's madness, I'll be voting against it. Yeah.

So what's changed? Because we're now, Labor is now backing a harder version of Brexit than that. That's not what I said out last week, Alistair. Absolutely not. A lot of water has passed under the bridge. And it's full of sewage. Including the deal that Boris struck with the European. We're not allowed to run on this podcast.

Struck with the European. Don't really has been banned from calling it Boris. You always say that to me. I think as the pandemic has receded, it is absolutely the case that the effects on the British economy have become clearer. And I think where we are, what I have to stress, and I've spent a lot of time touring the capitals of Europe, of course, in Washington as well, but also in Brussels.

Trust levels between us and our... friends and allies across the European Union is at an all-time low. I mean, it really, really is. We've had governments in this country that can't even bear to mention the European Union. We've had official documents that have tried to write out the European Union. We've had the government introducing a bill tearing up the deal. As I've said, our relations with the Irish, with the Germans, with the French, and it's not great. The first thing we've got to do when we enter office is normalise our relationship with the European Union, is to rebuild that trust with the European Union.

You do that with structured dialogue, so at least there's a forum several times a year where you're discussing the big issues. We also think that actually on security, a security pact with the European Union, there are issues beyond NATO that are arising sanctions policy, where the European Union is actually moving faster than the UK government. Procurement issues that come out of the UK and France representing 50% of Europe's defence. We should be working much more closely with our French colleagues building on Lancaster House. Some of the issues that arise a result of immigration, climate, horizon, financial equivalency, mobility for use.

All of these are issues that we want to be. structured dialogue with the European Union. We have an opportunity with the trade agreement in 2015. So we move from normalisation with the European Union to building on that relationship and getting back to being friends and deal with the enmity and the lack of trust that has arisen. Please don't underestimate. That is profoundly different from where we are today. We're infuginging on a day when the polls have come out showing now astonishingly that in every single constituency in Britain, with the exception of Boston and Skegness, the majority of voters now regret leaving the European Union. And it seems, certainly to Alistair myself, that there is an enormous political opportunity for a party brave enough to seize that and do something with it.

But what do you mean by that, Rory? What do you think that is beyond what I've just set out? Customs Union? Rory, when you knock on many of those doors, as I have in Yorkshire, the East Midlands, the so-called Red Wall, I've never seen the level of bewilderment, confusion, worry, fret about the state of affairs in the UK. That's the first thing. The second thing is when you speak to European colleagues, they talk quite a lot about political consensus here in the UK. and as you know, your former colleagues are driving in the complete opposite of political consensus.

Boris Johnson, when he won the 2019 election, had an opportunity to bring the country back together. He decided not to do that and prosecuted and led solely for those who voted leave. So how do we get the political consensus? I think we get it by being a government that can be trusted, by mending our relationships again. I don't recognise a picture in which we can swim back into the divides of the single market and the customs union at this stage. And it may not be voters here in London, but there are many voters for whom what they hear is, oh my God, they want another referendum.

Oh my God, they want, you know, they want to go back into the structures. And that's just not going to happen. Never mind the big questions about our rebate, about the euro, come on guys let's get real. No, David, but what they want, they want it fixed. I think you're right that people are sick to death of talking and hearing about Brexit, but there's anybody who follows this remotely closely knows that it's not going well, knows that it's damaging the economy, knows that it's damaging people's standards of living.

And I honestly do think the public are ahead of the politicians on this. I spend a lot of time up north. The idea that they're all sitting there thinking, if you touch my that Brexit deal, I'm going to be out on the streets against you. They want it fixed. And I don't think Keir had to go as far as he did in saying, he could have said we're going to do what we have to fix it. Why did you have to rule out the single market in the customs union?

What was the point of that politically? I think you're losing more people than you think by having such a hard-line position on this. I'm afraid because the reality is we have to normalise our relationships with the European Union first. Europe are looking for something different from you, not the same thing. If we win at the end of 2024, the beginning of 2025, we may still have. It looks like we may still have to renegotiate a Northern Ireland protocol deal. The European Union at the moment are saying we aren't discussing anything else with the UK until we fixed that protocol problem.

So that's the first thing. That is the truth of it. The second thing is when we get onto the second sets of things, you've got to have political consensus. You're asserting political consensus. We have a major political party at the moment, Rory, your old party. So please speak to your old colleagues who are an obstacle to any of the things that you're talking about. But your job is to get rid of them and form a government that does things differently. And I think you're defining your strategy according to the government. I'm doing that on a day-to-day basis. And therefore, I say, let us get back to normalisation. Let us build. We do have an opportunity on the review of the trade deal, Alistair, and Rory.

But look, getting back into the divides that drove a wedge between so many people in this country and indeed between us and the European Union, I just don't think that that, I just don't think it adds up. And I don't think it reopens big things that you're seeking to minimize, like the rebate, like whether we're going now into the EU. The European Union is not going to give us the same old deal, but I'm not. the way. And you know that. So it reopens up big, big debates that aren't easily going to be solved at this stage. David, one of the things that I guess worries me a little bit is that there are maybe two approaches to how Labor is going to go into this election. One of them is what

Alan Milburn in an interview we just did calls the Ming Vars strategy where you think we're 20 points ahead. We don't want to screw this out. We're just going to walk through. And the other one is the kind of strategy that appeals more to me in Alistair, which is that you lay out a very, very clear stall and you go for it. And it's feeling to me a little bit on diffid, on Europe, even on your fiscal policies and economic policies, that it's a bit of a Ming Vars strategy. There's some nice talk about a green gross deal, but you're admitting that you can't borrow money and the way that Biden can borrow money in the United States. So there's just not the cash to put behind it. And we're not getting much meat, apart from the fact that the Tories are useless. I don't think

that a 28 billion annual commitment for a green prosperity plan is a small commitment. I actually think relative to our size, it's commensurate to what the Democrats have got with their inflation reduction and it actually gets us to net zero. It builds green jobs. It's serious about renewables, solar and the future of our country and actually would drive a massive amount of investment domestically. I don't think that what my colleague, Bridget Philipson, is laying out on education, on skills, on productivity for both young people, but also those in further education is a small thing.

I think those are big plans. West Streeting is being really clear about all we've got to do in the NHS. It's not just about money. It's also about reform. And I've got to say, Rory, and, you know, Rory, we get on. We're good friends. But let's be honest about this. when you look back on this last 13 years, and let's even just take the first five or six under David Cameron,

the big story is, what has this country, what have we achieved? What's the legacy of this government? It's pretty shocking. And for all of those reasons, we need a Labour government, we know that. But absolutely, Kier said, we're not going to do it all in the first few years. I must see with you. That's why I said, your fundamental strategy is to say the Tories are rubbish, and I get that, and I can see why you're doing that. But what I'm not seeing is you're going into a situation where you're promising 28 billion pounds a year extra. There are many sounds coming out of the Labor Party of how they think the Tories are being not giving enough ground on wages. So a lot of strikes going on, a lot of suggestions that if Labor were in power, they would be giving more money to teachers, more money to doctors, more money to nurses, more money to people than working the rail industry. Where's this money going to come from?

Yeah, but you're now saying two things, Rory. and you've done this very well because on one level you've said David please can you can you make your commitment to 0.7 today and in another breath you're saying you're going to be inheriting lots of problems in the health service

in education where is the money going to come from and so what have we responded we've said it's going to be very very tough fiscally we're not going to be able to do everything in the first five years we've been really really honest with that and it's not completely clear

because we've had such a turbulent 2022, what we are going to inherit. So in a sense, Rory, you're making the argument for me. You wrote a book a while ago called Tribes, and we talk a lot on this podcast about polarization. And I guess your book, which I read and enjoyed, but I guess it was an analysis in a way of the different sort of forces of polarization around the world that we all get pushed into our kind of our tribal territories.

And you had an idea in there, which I wondered whether you've taken the idea and that you're trying to get it into policy, okay? Because I thought it was interesting. And I said, I wrote a piece about it. I said that you look beyond boundaries of left and right to explore how the tribalism doing so much to divide us can be made to build a sense of community. And this is me saying this. His proposal, for example, of a national civic service sounds like it might come from the

right. The way he argues it is that, however, makes it sound anything but. And I just wonder if that's something you just had in the book or whether that's something you actually want to take. I love that policy. I love that policy. Right. So why isn't it, when is he going to become Labor Party policy? I love that policy too. I'm a big fan on the policy. I tried to run on it, try to run on it when I was running for leadership. I love that policy. It's not cheap. It's not cheap. It's not cheap. And lots of colleagues will know that I've tapped them on the shoulder and said what about a national civic service, I'm not currently responsible for the Cabinet Office or education.

Foreign policy is domestic, too. So I can't say I've got round them. But it goes to this business of how do we come back together genuinely. How do we invest in big policy solutions that speak to the entirety of the country? and that's one that brings young and old, rich and poor, back together. My concern there is that if you go to university in Britain, you do begin to get a bit of a mix, but there are 50% of young people don't go to university,

and I worry that how does a kid in Sunderland meet a kid in Tottenham, what are we doing in relation to that? And that's why I have that in the book. The other bit of the book that really kind of hit me in the face is when you went to Wiggin, where Lisa Nandi is the MP, and she warned that unless we develop the right response to current concerns in places like this, we could have fascism in five years. Now, that sort of hit me between the eyes.

But how worried are you about the kind of body politic and whether actually that's a realistic fear? So just to come at this from a sort of macro point of view, because it's a deadly, deadly, deadly serious, deadly, seriously. And, you know, I think the color of my skin puts me at the right into the fulcrum of those worrying populist trends that are happening in countries like ours. I think that there has been a growth of extreme politics on the right and on the left, potentially, that really flows out of the 2008 crash. and the challenge that we are literally doing this interview in at the moment is on the back of that 2008 crash that gave us Trump, that gave us, no, I was going to say Farage.

On the back of that, we've now got this economic cost-a-living crisis that flows out of, if you like, the war in Ukraine and some of the behaviours of Putin and we've got some of the challenges posed by China. and we haven't talked about China in this interview, but clearly the Taiwan Straits is important. Clearly, the moves for, if you like, more protectionist policies from the United States, on semiconductors, on renewables is significant. We wait to see if that will have an effect on the global community. And so you're right that populism is in the midst of that in Western economies,

and we have to guard against it. it's definitely something that a next Labor government will have to do a lot to alleviate, just as the Democrats have tried in the United States. David, just to come back to one fundamental thing to your vision and foreign policy, the number of people in extreme poverty in Africa has gone from 170 million in 1980 to about 470 million today. The percentage of people in extreme poverty has barely declined. And yet the world isn't really talking about it.

They're getting more into talking about global health. They're talking more about climate. They're talking more about investment partnerships. And I just want to put down a marker that please don't end up sounding too much like a Tory. They were the great ones for saying, yeah, well, you know, other countries spend less than 0.7%. Look at how much Spain spends. And they were great ones for saying, why don't we do more modern partnerships? Because fundamentally it was a way of saying, we're going to try to justify not putting the money up to do.

our part in addressing global extreme poverty. And there are ways of doing that now, which didn't exist 10 years ago. And one of those is direct cash transfer, but it needs money. And I really want to encourage you not to get into the defensive explaining all the reasons why we're not producing money. This is what we call a charity boss making a pitch to a hopefully future foreign secretary. I, let's just go back to September and the United Nations General Assembly conference. And I was giving the government a very hard time about the reduction in funds to the global fund, which alleviates malaria, alleviates TB, deals with HIV, and a lion's share of that funding is about the continent of Africa. I think that, as we've discussed, ending up in a situation

where we're spending half the money here is a real problem. David, just to interrupt though on that, because you've said that, you've said that before, you said that before, but there is a distinction between global health and programs that directly address poverty. And I'm interested that you keep coming back to global health. No, but I also said, I also said that we're spending half the money here. And that's the money that would be spent on poverty alleviation, Rory. And you pushed me on that. And I said, I'm really committed to absolutely ending that scandal effectively when we come to office.

So I don't need reminding about the effects of the UK stepping. away from the legacy, I think, of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, which was a very, very important one. I'm really, you know, that's axiomatic, I would say to you. But I would say this. I don't think it's just about poverty alleviation. I do think, and this is a pushback, because you can end up sounding a little bit colonialist if it's not also about partnership. When I made the case I made before about why isn't there vaccine capacity to make and manufacture in Africa. The South Africans want it.

There actually is a big question for why the UK has not been part of that. No, isn't there? I think there is. David, the problem is that actually a lot of people say that. And I think that's fair enough. A lot of people arguing against giving direct cash assistance and any other forms of assistance are increasingly hiding behind the argument. Not me, Lorrie.

Not, colonialist to do it. Not this black man. Don't use the word partnership. as an excuse for not hitting the 0.7%, which is what it's used by many, many people. I'm not using it as an excuse. I think it's both and not either or. Do you see what I mean? Well, I think, David, you've been incredibly generous with your time. I guess finally, I want to ask whether in terms of if you do become foreign secretary, you've been a minister before, but in a, you know, relatively junior positions within government, you suddenly

will be in one of the sort of the most important positions in government. massive change for your family, all the security that goes with it, all that stuff. Are you kind of, are you psychologically preparing as well as politically? Trying to. I've got a new trainer. I think it's important to find, if you like, safe spaces that are yours in any given week just to sort of recalibrate. And that's been important and that has flowed from the lockdown. It does help having been in government before because you know the relentless pressures, you know, of the red box and the papers that flow from that.

I have a very supportive wife, wonderful, wonderful family and very good friends. So, yeah, I mean, I think all of us recognize that probably we have 18 months to two years to properly prepare. That's the great thing about being an opposition that's now in the place that Kirstama's got us into. and using that time as best we can so we can hit the ground running and really, really change lives. Well, David, from my point of view, also thank you. You've been very, very generous. I'm rooting for you.

I'm looking forward at the moment where we hear this 0.7% commitment coming clearly. I do believe that you're committed to these issues. We're going to announce it on a shared platform, Rory. No, and I genuinely, I'm grateful to both of you pushing. on 0.7, not on your own behalf, but on the behalf of, you know, many, many, many people across the world. And I was in Afghanistan last year, spent most of the time that I was there in tears because of the poverty that, you know, babies, you know, dehydrated and it's just, just awful stuff. So there's a very serious end to what that money delivers for poor people.

and then the second point, obviously, where the UK economy finds itself as a result of Brexit and the way that we deal with that. But my pushback was just actually how bad things are with Europe and therefore how we get through where we are, which is why we need a change of government. So I'm very grateful. And is it painful to see Arsenal, in your tribalism, do you define your Totnamism through Arsenal's successful failure? I think that my love of Tottenham and my love of Labor is a bit similar.

You know, the Labour Party only had power for 23 years of the 20th century. I mean, that's extraordinarily small. And so the big challenge in this 21st century is can we get a bit more? Can we get more progressive time in the 21st century? I think we're on the cusp of building on those first 10 years that Tony and Gordon had. It's a bit like Spurs because we play beautiful football, but we don't always land the prize. Yeah, well, I think if you're going to put the chores out of business, which frankly I think they deserve to be, you might have to shift on PR as well. Didn't have time for that one.

Didn't have time for that. Next time. David, thanks for your time. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. Okay, Rory. So what do you think?

I enjoyed it. I really liked the first bit talking. I know David really, really well. I've known him for years, but I think actually hearing him talk about his background and his family. And I actually think he made a good fist of explaining why foreign policy matters. And I get where you were coming from with the whole kind of America, you know, Biden and Trump, America first. But I think actually he was.

I felt that was a more compelling argument. Yeah. So just a couple of things there. I mean, on the echoes between his foreign policy is domestic and Biden and Jake Sullivan, the U.S. national security adviser saying the same thing. I think that's not a coincidence. David Lamy understands the U.S. very well, was educated at Harvard Law School, worked for a U.S. law firm, I think is close to the Democratic Party.

And I think will have been very, very influenced by that article by Jake Sullivan in trying to frame his own foreign policy. I just think that it's obviously for the reasons that I said that there are some dangers in it. And one of the dangers is that in the end, unless you hold the line, and that's why the 0.7% was important, the domestic always ends up feeling more important than the international. Oh yeah, for sure. But again, at the same time, I think you pointed out, well, you pointed out again today in relation to the strikes and whether to pay more to the nurses, the teachers, the ambulance guys, etc., the more the country feels that there will be a Labor government,

the more that the opposition and the media will try to frame the debate in opposition about what Labour would do in government and try to force them into positions that at this stage they probably don't want to take. And I could sort of feel the presence of Rachel Reeves and Pat McFadden on both shoulders there, as he was speaking, that there's no...

All of these guys are quite disciplined now in not making commitments that they've not yet agreed at the top table. Yeah, it's also a real reminder. We don't often interview serving politicians. In fact, he's one of, I think, only two that we've done. And I do feel a lot of sympathy for him there. I think he did a really good job.

But it is important for listeners to remember that senior politicians like that in the shadow cabinet have to defend the party line. He may not necessarily agree with every word there, but he's worked out how to make the case. And the only odd thing about it for me was that sometimes making the case for why he didn't feel we could get immediately to 0.7%.

He did end up, unfortunately, sounding a lot like my Tory colleagues who used exactly the same arguments, I remember when they were justifying going away from 0.7%. So that's something I'm sort of trying to warn him off. Yeah, yeah. Well, I think his heart is definitely in the right place, that's for sure. I also think David's grown a lot.

I can remember when he was a minister. And, you know, I sometimes felt he wanted to be the guy on the back benches with the fire and the brimstone and the passion. He is a terrific speaker. I mean, that Windrush speech, if people look it up, it really, really was good. You know, inevitably, over the last couple of decades, he's grown and developed. And put it this way, I could imagine him sitting down speaking with, you know, U.S. Secretary of State, foreign leaders, ambassadors, etc. I mean, he's clearly, I think, growing into the brief. Absolutely.

I mean, I've had Labour colleagues grumble in the past that they don't feel that there's necessarily the depth of town that they'd like to see on the Labor benches. But I think David Lammy is definitely an exception to that. I think he's somebody who absolutely deserves to be at the top table in a cabinet. And I thought that came out beautifully in the first half, where I thought he was funny, he was nuanced, he had wonderful different perspectives, he communicated beautifully. People often very rude about professional politicians, and he couldn't be more of a professional politician entering Parliament at the age of 28. He barely has had any life really outside Parliament.

But a bit, as you've pointed out, was Joe Biden, who's another long-term professional politician. The best of them do really grow into the role, then they? And they end up with some extraordinary skills at the end of it. Good. Well, that's another one in the bank, as they say. And we shall meet again tomorrow for the what we call the normal podcast. Very good. Looking forward to it. Bye-bye, Amsterdam. All the best. Take care. Bye.