David Lammy has moved to dampen down speculation of a rift with Donald Trump after his comments branding the president-elect “a racist KKK and Nazi sympathiser” resurfaced.
In an article in 2018 the now foreign secretary wrote about Mr Trump’s first official visit to the UK and described him as a “tyrant” and “a woman-hating, neo-Nazi-sympathising sociopath”.
However, in his first interview since the president-elect’s victory he told the BBC Newcast podcast that Mr Trump’s campaign was “very well run”, adding: “I felt in my bones that there could be a Trump presidency.”
Mr Lammy was further challenged in the interview about comments he made about Mr Trump before becoming foreign secretary.
In the same article in 2018, the Tottenham MP said that he would be protesting against the then-government’s “capitulation to this tyrant in a toupee”.
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.”
Asked if he had changed his views on BBC Newscast on Thursday, Mr Lammy said his comments were “old news” and many politicians had said some “pretty ripe things” about Trump in the past.
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.
“And I am foreign secretary. There are things I know now that I didn’t know back then.”
Pressed whether Mr Trump had brought up the insults when the pair met in New York, Mr Lammy said: “Not even vaguely.
“I know this is a talking point today, but 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 round, 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.”
Mr Lammy has sought to build links with Mr Trump’s 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.
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.
