Sir Keir Starmer has defended his foreign secretary David Lammy, who in the past called Donald Trump a “neo-Nazi sympathising sociopath”.
Mr Lammy will remain in his post until the next election, Downing Street said on Wednesday just hours after Mr Trump’s victory was secured.
The vote of confidence came after the prime minister was asked to apologise for his frontbencher’s attack in an article written when he was a backbench MP in 2018.
A year earlier Mr Lammy also tweeted: “Yes, if Trump comes to the UK I will be out protesting on the streets. He is a racist KKK and Nazi sympathiser.”
Mr Lammy has sought to build links with the Trump regime since becoming foreign secretary, but the election result has shone a new spotlight on his comments, prompting questions about his ability to work with the next US president.
In the same article in 2018, the Tottenham MP wrote about Mr Trump’s first official visit to the UK, saying that he would be protesting against the then-government’s “capitulation to this tyrant in a toupee”.
“Trump is not only a woman-hating, neo-Nazi-sympathising sociopath,” he wrote, “he is also a profound threat to the international order that has been the foundation of Western progress for so long.”
The prime minister came under pressure over the comments at Prime Minister’s Questions in the Commons from the new Tory leader Kemi Badenoch.
Referring to a dinner between the PM, Mr Lammy and Mr Trump in September, she asked: “Did the foreign secretary take that opportunity to apologise for making derogatory and scatological references, including, and I quote, ‘Trump is not only a woman-hating Neo-Nazi sympathising sociopath, he is also a profound threat to the international order’, and if he did not apologise, will the prime minister do so now on his behalf?”
Sir Keir dodged the question, saying that the meeting had been “very constructive”.
Earlier this year Mr Lammy defended calling Mr Trump a neo-Nazi sociopath, saying all politicians had something to say about him “back in the day”.
He also said he had met Mr Trump’s vice-president JD Vance and that the two men had “common ground”.
“We’re both from poor backgrounds, both suffered from addiction issues in our family which we’ve written about… both of us [are] Christians. And now I’ve met him on a few occasions, and we have been able to find common ground and get on,” he said.
Sir Keir opened PMQs by congratulating the president-elect on his victory.
He added: “As the closest of allies, the UK and US will continue to work together to protect our shared values of freedom and democracy.
“And having had dinner with president-elect Trump just a few weeks ago, I look forward to working with him in the years to come.”
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