David Lammy
David Lindon Lammy is a British politician who has served as Deputy Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Secretary of State for Justice and Lord Chancellor since September 2025. He previously served as Foreign Secretary from July 2024 to September 2025. A member of the Labour Party, he has been Member of Parliament for Tottenham since 2000. Lammy previously held various junior ministerial positions under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown between 2002 and 2010.
Born in London, Lammy attended The King's School, Peterborough. He studied law at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London and was called to the bar in 1994. He later studied for a Master of Laws degree at Harvard University, becoming the first black Briton to study at Harvard Law School. In 2000, Lammy briefly served in the London Assembly before being elected to Parliament in the 2000 Tottenham by-election. Tony Blair appointed him Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Public Health in 2002 and Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Constitutional Affairs in 2003. He was promoted to Minister of State for Culture in 2005. In 2007, Gordon Brown appointed him Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Innovation, Universities and Skills before Lammy served as Minister of State for Higher Education from 2008 to 2010.
Following Labour's defeat in the 2010 general election, Lammy endorsed David Miliband in the 2010 Labour leadership election and subsequently declined to serve in Ed Miliband's Shadow Cabinet. He then spent the next decade on the backbenches, and was a candidate in the 2015 London Labour Party mayoral selection but ultimately finished fourth. Lammy endorsed Keir Starmer in the 2020 Labour leadership election and was appointed Shadow Secretary of State for Justice and Shadow Lord Chancellor in Starmer's Shadow Cabinet. In the November 2021 Shadow Cabinet reshuffle, he was promoted to Shadow Foreign Secretary.
Following Labour's victory in the 2024 general election, Lammy returned to government after being appointed Foreign Secretary by Starmer in his ministry. As Foreign Secretary, Lammy helped negotiate the transfer of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius and several trade deals following the introduction of Donald Trump's tariffs. In the 2025 cabinet reshuffle, he was appointed Deputy Prime Minister, Justice Secretary and Lord Chancellor. He is the first person of colour to hold the position.
Early life and career
David Lindon Lammy was born on 19 July 1972 in Whittington Hospital in Archway, north London, to Guyanese parents David and Rosalind Lammy. He and his four siblings were raised solely by his mother after his father left the family when Lammy was 12 years old. Lammy has spoken about the importance of fathers and the need to support them in seeking to be active in the lives of their children. He chairs the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Fatherhood, and has written on the issue.Lammy grew up in Tottenham, and went to Downhills Primary School. At the age of 10, he was awarded an Inner London Education Authority choral scholarship to sing at Peterborough Cathedral and received a state school education at The King's School, Peterborough.
Lammy studied at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, graduating with a 2:1 in law. He was called to the bar of England and Wales in 1994 at Lincoln's Inn. He went on to study at Harvard University, where he became the first black Briton to attend Harvard Law School; he studied for a Master of Laws degree and graduated in 1997.
After Harvard, Lammy was employed as an attorney at Howard Rice in California from 1997 to 1998, and with D. J. Freeman from 1998 to 2000. He is a visiting professor of practice at SOAS.
Parliamentary career
In May 2000, Lammy was elected for Labour on the London-wide list to the London Assembly. Later in the same month, he was selected as the Labour candidate for the parliamentary constituency of Tottenham, following the recent death of the veteran member of parliament, Bernie Grant. Lammy was elected to the seat in a by-election held on 22 June 2000 with 53.5% of the vote and a majority of 5,646. Aged 27, he was the youngest MP in the house at the time.Lammy was re-elected as MP for Tottenham at the 2001 general election with an increased vote share of 67.5% and an increased majority of 16,916.
Minister
In 2002, he was appointed by Prime Minister Tony Blair as Parliamentary under-secretary of state in the Department of health. In 2003, Lammy was appointed by Blair as a Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State in the Department for Constitutional Affairs and while a member of the Government, voted in favour of authorisation for Britain to invade Iraq in 2003.At the 2005 general election, Lammy was again re-elected, with a decreased vote share of 57.9% and a decreased majority of 13,034. After the election, Blair appointed Lammy as Minister for Culture at the Department of Culture, Media and Sport.
In June 2007, new prime minister Gordon Brown demoted Lammy to the rank of Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State in the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills. In October 2008, he was promoted by Brown to Minister of State and appointed to the Privy Council. In June 2009, Brown appointed Lammy as Minister for Higher Education in the new Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, leading the Commons ministerial team as Peter Mandelson was Secretary of State.
Opposition backbencher
At the 2010 general election, Lammy was again re-elected, with an increased vote share of 59.3% and an increased majority of 16,931. After Labour lost the election, Lammy returned to the backbenches, and a Labour Party leadership contest was announced. During the contest Lammy nominated Diane Abbott, saying that he felt it was important to have a diverse field of candidates, but subsequently declared his support for David Miliband. Following the election of Ed Miliband, Lammy pledged his full support but turned down a post in the Shadow cabinet, highlighting the need to speak on a wide range of issues that would arise in his constituency due to "large cuts in the public services".In 2012, Lammy pledged his support to Ken Livingstone's bid to become the Labour London mayoral candidate in the 2012 London mayoral election, declaring him "London's Mayor in waiting". Lammy became Livingstone's selection campaign chair. In 2014, Lammy announced that he was considering entering the race to become Mayor of London in the 2016 election.
Lammy was again re-elected at the 2015 general election with an increased vote share of 67.3% and an increased majority of 23,564. Following the party's defeat, Lammy was one of 36 Labour MPs to nominate Jeremy Corbyn, whom he is good friends with, as a candidate in the Labour leadership election of 2015.
London mayoral candidate
On 4 September 2014, Lammy announced his intention to seek the Labour nomination for the 2016 mayoral election. In the London Labour Party's selection process, he secured 9.4% of first preference votes and was fourth overall, behind Sadiq Khan, Tessa Jowell and Diane Abbott.In March 2016, he was fined £5,000 for instigating 35,629 automatic phone calls urging people to back his mayoral campaign without gaining permission to contact the party members concerned. Lammy apologised "unreservedly" for breach of the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations 2003. It was the first time a politician had been fined for authorising nuisance calls.
Return to the frontbench
At the snap 2017 general election, Lammy was again re-elected with an increased vote share of 81.6% and an increased majority of 34,584. At the 2019 general election, Lammy was again re-elected, with a decreased vote share of 76% and a decreased majority of 30,175.Lammy endorsed Keir Starmer and Angela Rayner in the 2020 Labour leadership and deputy leadership elections. After Starmer was elected Labour leader in April 2020, Lammy was appointed to the Shadow Cabinet as Shadow Secretary of State for Justice. In the November 2021 Shadow Cabinet reshuffle, Lammy was promoted to Shadow Foreign Secretary.
On 7 February 2022, while Lammy and Starmer were leaving Parliament, they were ambushed by a group of people who shouted abuse at Starmer including the words "traitor" and "Jimmy Savile". This followed Boris Johnson falsely blaming Starmer for the non-prosecution of Savile when Starmer was Director of Public Prosecutions in the Crown Prosecution Service. Starmer was DPP in the years immediately prior to Savile's death but there is no evidence he was involved in the decision to not have him prosecuted. Two people, a man and a woman, were arrested after a traffic cone was thrown at police officers. Johnson tweeted that it was "absolutely disgraceful" and thanked the police for acting swiftly. Shayan Sardarizadeh for BBC Monitoring said that the protest was an attempt to recreate the Ottawa "freedom convoy" protests in the UK, and noted that the activists' references to Magna Carta indicated that the protesters were members of the sovereign citizen movement. Julian Smith, the former chief whip, and Simon Hoare were among Conservatives who called for Johnson to apologise. MP Kim Leadbeater and Brendan Cox, the respective sister and husband of murdered MP Jo Cox, warned against politicians lending credence to far-right conspiracy theories. The following day, a Downing Street source said that Johnson still would not apologise for the slur against Starmer. Following the incident when activists forced police to protect Lammy and Starmer extremists issued multiple death threats against Starmer and other Labour MPs. The Center for Countering Digital Hate sent material to the Metropolitan Police. Imran Ahmed of the CCDH stated, "Every time a violent extremist makes a threat of violence and gets away with it, the norms of those groups worsen, and others are driven to newer depths of behaviour."
In August 2022, an inquiry found that he had inadvertently breached the MPs' code of conduct. He apologised in a letter to Parliamentary Standards Commissioner Kathryn Stone.
In January 2023, Lammy visited Northern Ireland with Shadow Secretary Peter Kyle and Shadow Cabinet Office Minister Jenny Chapman, visiting Foyle Port to make a statement on the Northern Ireland Protocol.
On 19 November 2023, Lammy visited Israel and had a meeting with Israeli president Isaac Herzog and Foreign Minister Eli Cohen. That month, Lammy said an Israeli strike on a refugee camp could be "legally justified". In January 2024, as he was giving a speech, he was interrupted by pro-Palestinian protesters.
At the 2024 general election, Lammy was again re-elected with a decreased vote share of 57.5% and a decreased majority of 15,434.