David Lammy: Brexit left Britain isolated. Labour wants to change that

“It’s a volatile time,” said Lammy on his fourth visit to the Middle East in the past six weeks. “It was important to get to Lebanon because clearly there is a significant risk of escalation here. I understood in real time, when I was in Israel, the huge concern the government has about its northern border, having moved about 80,000 people from that border because of its fear of rocket attacks from Hezbollah.”

He added: “There have been attacks from Israel too. The truth is that [the attacks] have [previously] been within a set of norms that both parties fully understand. But in the last few weeks that’s changed and … there’s certainly been a raising of the rhetoric. So this is a sensitive and worrying time.”

Those fears are being stoked by Iran, which backs Hezbollah and Yemen’s Houthi rebels. Lammy said it was time to “look again” at proscribing the regime’s Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist organisation. “I take the threats from Iran very seriously indeed,” he said, adding that the freedoms and opportunities enjoyed in Britain “are inimical to Iran and those that run it at this time. I think of particularly the young women, the LGBTQ communities, under so much pressure in that country. So there’s a lot to be very serious about and to fight for, not just on behalf of our own self interest and our own countries, but on behalf of so many people across the world.”

Lammy has already visited Israel, the West Bank, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt as part of a campaign to get to know other significant global players ahead of the general election later this year, and his likely elevation to foreign secretary, which he describes as “a huge privilege”.

Plaques for those killed by the explosion. At least 218 people died and more than 300,000 were made homeless

OLIVER MARSDEN

Lammy, 51, is intent on restoring the UK��s standing in the world after the Brexit referendum, which he claims left the country looking “slightly isolated”, “very inward-looking” and the “absolute opposite of being a global Britain.”

He has committed a Labour government to working with Donald Trump if he recaptures the White House this autumn — despite fears the former president will abandon Nato and parts of his Republican Party will abandon Ukraine. Speaking ahead of the Iowa caucus to choose the Republican nominee for president, in which Trump is expected to triumph, Lammy — who is “absolutely clear that a Labour government will stand with the people of Ukraine” — said: “There will be some differences, but there are many more areas on which we can continue to work together.”

Lammy, who was the first black Briton to study at Harvard Law School, and counts Barack Obama and Condoleezza Rice among his friends, added: “There is absolutely no place for a cancel culture under a foreign office led by me and a Labour Party led by Keir Starmer. The real politics of our time means that’s the sort of politics of the student union. It’s not the serious world in which we’re living, with so many people depending on Britain taking its place seriously on the world stage once again, building partnerships and being progressive, but also being realistic about the real challenges and threats that we face.”

One of which is China. Lammy said he worries that President Xi and the Chinese Communist Party “look at western democracies [and] think because of our four, five-year election cycles, that we’re only able to think short term”. For that reason has pledged that Labour will conduct an audit “from the minute we come in … right across Whitehall. We obviously haven’t got all of the intelligence, but we will have that if we win power. And we will have to set a consistent position on China where we are able to challenge them on issues where we disagree, such as security and human rights, but co-operate with them where we can and where we must, and on issues like climate change, on world health and indeed on trade.”

During his 36 hours in Beirut last week, Lammy met Najib Mikati, Lebanon’s caretaker prime minister; Nabih Berri, the Speaker of the Lebanese parliament; and Abdallah Bou Habib, the foreign minister.

Najib Mikati, Lebanon’s caretaker prime minister, insists: “We don’t want war”

OLIVER MARSDEN

Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton, the foreign secretary, is expected to follow in Lammy’s footsteps and visit Lebanon in the coming days or weeks.

“You build relationships in the Middle East and the Gulf that really matter,” Lammy said. “There are a number of foreign ministers, including the foreign minister of Lebanon, that have taken me for a meal because they actually want to get to know you and look into the whites of your eyes. I understood right from the beginning of stepping into this role that you take your eye off the Middle East at your peril.”

There are fears that Hezbollah, the militant Shia party that takes its orders from Tehran and has an arsenal of weapons that includes drones and laser-guided “smart” munitions, could drag Lebanon into a war it cannot afford.

When the country’s economy collapsed in 2019, the World Bank described it as one of the “most severe crises … globally since the mid-19th century”. Its currency had lost more than 98 percent of its value by February last year. Inflation averaged 171.2 per cent in 2022.

To stop a complete financial collapse, the banks put a freeze on Lebanese citizens withdrawing their savings. Since then, people have been holding up their own banks to access their cash. Last week one customer threatened to set himself on fire unless Fransabank, in Beirut’s southern suburbs, released his father’s money.

The Gesture, a towering sculpture made of reclaimed construction steel that serves as a memorial to the victims of the explosion, stands near the destroyed silos

OLIVER MARSDEN

According to the UN, more than half of Lebanon’s population is now living below the poverty line, and the middle class has in effect been wiped out.

The army was forced to cut costs by feeding on-duty soldiers a vegetarian diet instead of more expensive meat. Traffic lights turned off as the electricity ran out, leaving drivers to negotiate intersections with common sense and prayer. A local NGO has turned them back on using solar power, but drivers have become so accustomed to skipping them that they no longer obey red lights.

The government is paralysed by a power-sharing agreement that means Maronite Christians, Sunni Muslims and Shia Muslims must have roles but that prevents decision-making, reform and progress.

“Lebanon has been through a very tough time indeed,” said Lammy, warning this would be exacerbated by an escalation of the conflict between Israel and Hamas.

This sentiment is echoed by Mikati, who said: “Always we have warnings or threats from the Israelis about the destruction of Lebanon and making a war against Lebanon,” said the caretaker premier. “Our position here is always … ‘We don’t want war’.”

Peace hangs on a plan put forward by Amos Hochstein, the US envoy, on his visit to Beirut last week. In it, he envisioned demarcating the border between Lebanon and Israel, in the hope of settling 13 disputed points. It would also include returning the area of Shebaa Farms, lost to Israel during its occupation of Lebanon following the 1967 war. For Mikati, this is fundamental to any agreement.

David Lammy in front of the Martyrs Monument and the al-Amin Mosque in Martyrs Square. He is working on a road map to peace between Lebanon and Israel

OLIVER MARSDEN

In return, Hezbollah would vacate a large swathe of southern Lebanon and resettle above the Litani river, roughly 50km north of the Israeli border.

However, Mikati has made it clear that progress depends on a sustainable ceasefire in Gaza, Lammy said, adding: “That does not mean that negotiations can’t be taking place now and that [the plan] can be implemented should that ceasefire come. So this is absolutely the time for me to be here and for those discussions and hopefully a ‘road map’ to emerge over the coming days.”

Labour joined the Conservative Party in December in calling for a sustainable ceasefire in Gaza. It is also backing a negotiated two-state solution to end the violence.

However, the party’s position has not always gone far enough for some of its members. In November, eight frontbenchers quit their roles to back a parliamentary motion calling for an immediate ceasefire, when Starmer backed only a humanitarian pause. Another 56 Labour MPs rebelled to support the motion.

Defending the party’s stance, Lammy said: “The Labour Party is an internationalist party. It’s a party that takes notions of solidarity, human rights and those that are the most vulnerable very seriously indeed. And the Palestinian cause is a just cause: 75 years and still occupied. I am very comfortable with those that want to make their voices heard and those that feel the need to protest. I’m proud to live in a great democracy like ours, which has a long tradition.

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“But being a decision-maker in the Labour Party alongside Keir Starmer, I’m also comfortable with the principled position that we have taken from the beginning, where we were very clear following [the Hamas attacks on] October 7 that Israel had a right to defend itself against the worst atrocity that it’s experienced as a nation. We were also very clear that it had to be proportionate, that it should minimise civilian loss of life and it had to be within international law.”

He added: “We did not believe at that time that you would get a ceasefire, because at that stage, none of the hostages had been returned. So we called for a pause and we saw a pause in which hostages were released and which allowed more trucks and aid into Gaza. The situation’s moved on since then, and that’s why we are calling for a truce now that leads to a sustainable ceasefire.”

Last week, Jeremy Corbyn, the former Labour leader who now sits as an independent MP, joined the South African government in the Hague to push its case that Israel has committed genocide against the Palestinian people of Gaza. Although Lammy was once friends with Corbyn and was one of 36 Labour MPs to nominate him as a candidate in the Labour leadership election of 2015 — something for which he has since apologised — he does not rush to join him in condemning Israel’s actions.

“I’m here as a politician, not a lawyer,” he said. “These sorts of issues take years to determine and need quite a lot of evidence.”