with nick robinson. hello and welcome to political thinking. how do we live with a resurgent russia? do we need to confront or cooperate with china? can the uk repair its relations with the eu post—brexit? foreign policy matters again. my guest on political thinking this week hopes to be our next foreign secretary, the first labour foreign secretary for many, many years. it's a dramatic change for david lammy, who for years used his powerful voice in the back benches to argue forjustice for the people in his constituency in his home of tottenham in north london. david lammy, welcome to political thinking. thank you, nice to be back.

when you were last on this programme, you talked to me about how pleased you were to be on the backbenches. i'm very satisfied, you said. i feel free, i feel liberated. i mean, at the time, you were making those passionate speeches that you did on grenfell, on windrush and all the rest of it, does that now mean you feel sort of caged? not quite. i loved being on the backbenches, you know, i really did. i loved being in government, to the extent that you actually did something. i suppose i am now in the third act. i don't know how many acts there are going to be. but what would i say this time? i have been in parliament 22 years, i'm 50 in a couple of weeks�* time... so i suppose i've got to come to terms with the sort of seniority in parliament, and, you know, parliament is generous if you have been there a long time, this is notjust your own party,

it is the opposition as well. parliament quite likes specialisms and i've, you know, there are some issues that i feel i have returned to consistently over many years, and colleagues know that. and i suppose it is nice to be able to do the heavy lifting on behalf of the labour party, to support keir starmer, my friend, and this next stage, which i think, my hunch is we will ultimately end up in government again. does that big birthday, does that 50, in a way, act as a kind of reminder, what have i done? what have i achieved? where have i got to? because i remember quite a few years back, talking to you, and you were looking at the man who's your friend, barack obama, who was off to be president, and you were struggling along not quite getting to the places that people had said you would get to, and inevitably, that was a frustrating time. oh, god, that is a big

question, nick. the first thing i should say is i have done something as i have approached 50 which i don't think i had done last time i spoke to you, which is i have got a therapist. so i now get to reflect quite hard on notjust 22 years in public life, but being a father of three kids. you know, my eldest two are teenagers now. my parents have passed away. you know, heading towards 20 years in a marriage. as well as having a big, seriousjob. so, 50 for me is also about, you know, waking up in the morning, especially if you have got to do the today programme and your feet and your knees ache, and all that sort of stuff, basically. do you mind me asking, why the therapist? i think i decided in lockdown. and i didn't have... the first bit of lockdown was great, you know, we were cooking, we were all at home,

i remember, it was a nice spring. but the second bit was really torturous, i couldn't stand all the zooms, i couldn't stand... you know, i love the theatre, i love the cinema, i love socially meeting people, and all of that had been restricted. and i guess i decided i have got to the stage where i want to understand myself more. and, actually, writing, which was the bit that was my therapy, is not sufficient. so, that is why... it is my safe space every week, my safe hour. i have to do it on zoom because i am far too busy to go to someone's couch, but it is great. it works? it works, yes, it has made me a bit happier, yes. and a bit more content with where i am, which is the key thing. do you get excited by the idea, notjust that you could be labour's first foreign secretary in more than a dozen years,

but you would be the first ever black foreign secretary. is that important to you or do you think of them as meaningless labels, who cares? i am very excited about the prospect that i could be labour's first foreign secretary for well over a decade, and i think a labour government would represent a degree of calm and normality in what is a very bumpy world, and i look forward to that. one being a black foreign secretary, or the first black foreign secretary, well, that is this country, isn't it? my parents, if they were alive, would just, oh! they would be shocked and delighted, and it makes me almost emotional thinking about it, you know, ijust did the windrush memorial event in waterloo station, it was a hugely emotional event, and that is the way in which this country, i'm thinking, you know, people likejessica ennis and the huge advances that we have made, i would be one step in that long, important journey.

and, generally speaking, this is an incremental country, not a revolutionary one. we've had a revolution recently, and i think that was brexit, but on the whole, we do things incrementally. and it is why my parents, for example... i mean, my mother kept so much royal... what do you call it? paraphernalia. paraphernalia in our front living room. she particularly loved princess margaret because she had a home in the caribbean. you know, we can... we somehow rub along. were you flag—waving during thejubilee? or is it all, you know, whatever? let me tell you a story. the most dramatic day of my life, in a way, in political life and in a personal level, was the day that barack obama became president of the united states. iknew him... because, just to explain, you had both been harvard law students. because we had both been harvard law students,

and we had become friends. i had stayed up all night commentating on the media, including with you, on his victory. i hadn't slept. and that evening i had to go to buckingham palace to become a privy councillor, you know, when you become senior in parliament, you can get recommended and the "right honourable" is because you become a privy councillor. there is a ceremony that you have with the queen, you kneel before the queen on a beautiful soft cushion, you kiss her ring, and you swear and you become a privy councillor. and i'm afraid because i had been so tired, i had stayed up all night, it was... lots of exuberation. and i lent forward, and i think i must have tipped right towards the queen, she had to hold my head back. what, so you didn't fall asleep? literally, yes! what a way to become a privy councillor, so, you know,

it was one of those dizzying occasions on which, again, wow, i'm becoming a privy councillor. who would have thought that that would happen when i was growing up in tottenham in the 1970s? no—one would have believed it. it's an indication of the incremental way this country can make these small steps. what's interesting is you talk about incremental change rather than revolution, you talk about dialling down the noise, i sense there is someone that wants to get back somewhere that we've left. you wrote a book recently about tribalism. you say something fascinating in the book, which is that you think loneliness is one of the reasons people look to be in a tribe, and they can do that on social media in a way that when you were growing up, when i was growing up, would not have been possible. one of the other things that has happened in our society is that people are saying, i'm lonely.

41% of brits say that they are lonely. there are people who only have their pet or their tv for company. i was very struck, and i write about this in tribes — the man that sent myself and some other mps terrible hate messages, death threats, and i went to the court case, and he was just a very lonely 67—year—old in wolverhampton. he had gone down this silo of extreme right—wing hate, really. because it got him attention. it made him feel powerful in an otherwise world in which he was on his own and felt very un—empowered. so, i think the point is that loneliness is on the increase, the nature of being in your bedroom on social media, losing certain industries that used to give communities, men, particularly, a sense

of themselves and their identity, those are gone, inequality, all of those things driving a world in which we become more atomised, and we don't pay enough attention to what binds us together, what we have in common, what does it mean to build the nation, what does it mean to build locality, and should governments be in the business of supporting that? and i think they absolutely should. they should, and you say in the book, you say we should have a sort of national service, no, not the old sort, not going out to fight or being ready to fight but what you call a compulsory national civic service. are you wanting people to have the experience that you did? last time you talked to me here on political thinking, you told the extraordinary story of being a boy from tottenham whose world was a couple of kind of n postcodes in north london suddenly finding yourself at a choral school, as a choral scholar in peterborough, taking the train for the first time. are you saying, in a sense, what civic national service

could do is take people out of their environments and introduce them to very different people and very different places? absolutely. now, because i believe in an encounter culture. i grew up poor, black, literally never went much beyond the n15 postcode in tottenham, and it was only because i went to choral school in peterborough that i came across middle england. i was exposed to a different life. i didn't realise at the time that if i had just gone three miles up the road to enfield, it would it wouldn't have been that different, but i got on a city train, i went for voice trials, it was the era of aled jones, i became a chorister. and i'm... i'm hugely struck that you can be growing up in cleethorpes and if you don't go to university,

this is half the country, you may never come into contact with a young person who is growing up in tottenham. where do we come together to share our values as a country? now, the royalfamily do provide some of that glue, we have just been through the platinum jubilee, but i suspect there is more to do around this business of a healthy patriotism and belief in our national identity. what is interesting is you have called that your billy elliot moment, when you went to that school, it was your x factor moment, it obviously worked for you, you became head boy, you went on to a top university. but linking back to what you were saying about loneliness, when you made thatjourney to the united states, when you became a scholar at harvard, there were moments for you of loneliness, is that why you empathise so much with people who face it now? yes. i mean, the truth is that... myjourney of being the first black chorister, the first black briton to go to harvard law school,

you know, one of the youngest members of parliament when i became a member of parliament 22 years ago, was a bit dizzying and a bit disorientating. and i certainly found myself, and i only ended up in a law firm in california because i really liked the show la law, and the young black guy in it, jonathan rollins, and i thought, i want to copy him. in a world with no role models, you land on the most obscure things, so i ended up working in silicon valley and, of course, i was a long way from home, i missed tea, walkers crisps, everything. and i did end up lonely, i ended up depressed, and on antidepressants. and i ended up coming home, and that was absolutely the right decision for me, so i have experienced those moments in my life, and i do relate in part to the way you can get lost down the silos

or these echo chambers. i do need to say, before i get wrung up after doing this from the leader's office and the labour party, a national civic service is in my book, it is not labour party policy, i have not persuaded my colleagues. rachael reeves will probably ring me up and say, david, that would cost a fortune! that is the difference. we were talking at the beginning of the difference between being a backbencher and a frontbencher, and you have just revealed it, you have to be very careful of what your colleagues will say. well, let's talk a little bit about this new role you are in now, newish role, and the role you hope to have if you become labour foreign secretary. one of the dilemmas for parties of the centre—left is about what the nature of foreign policy is. now, this isn't that place to take you through everything that is in the news now and interrogate that, more the place to get a sense of where you come from. the expectation of many people on the left is that foreign policy

should be values—led, that is what it should be about. people on the other side of politics tend to say it is about pragmatism, you do what is right for your country, nothing more, nothing less than that. have you yet found how you and labour would chart a course? i think the starting point for us here in the uk is as a... ..medium—sized country with a significant economy with the huge benefits of the english language, which opens up much of the global community to us. massive soft power assets like the bbc and the british council and our theatre, our arts. it does seem to me that our future is a multilateral future, and absolutely we should defend

a rules—based order that was established after the second world war which means that the rule of law is important to us. and our allies and partners are people attracted to that rules—based rule of law multilateral world. that is values—based. it does mean that we have a passionate conflict with the government over tearing up the northern ireland protocol. we don't think that there is much to be gained from picking unnecessary fights with our european partners. the contrast that you i'm sure you want to draw with borisjohnson and liz truss, the current foreign secretary, is obvious. when you say we want to be trustworthy, reliable partners, we get that. the question, in a sense, i'm asking you, though, is more about the lessons you might learn from a former labour foreign secretary, from robin cook. he talked of an ethical foreign policy. and what he struggled with, then, was people saying, well, can you deal with those people?

now, if you have a values—based foreign policy, can david lammy, if he is foreign secretary, if his official said, or the prime minister said, i need you to go to saudi arabia, we need saudi oil, we need their cooperation on terrorism, i know we don't like them, but we've got to do it — can a values—based foreign policy allow you to do that? well, look, robin cook was doing his role a long time ago, this is before the 2008 crash, it is before social media, it is certainly not in this multipolar world that i am talking about, and i do think values are under attack in a way that they simply weren't in the 1990s in quite the way that i am describing. look, my own view is that we are in a very sorry place if our foreign policy is purely transactional.

if our prime minister is rushing to saudi arabia the day after they have executed 81 people... it is tricky, though, you tweeted a couple of years ago before you became shadow foreign secretary, it is time for the international community to wake up and defend the liberal and social values we have fought so hard for. mbs, the crown prince, should be under investigation. but you might have to deal with him. look, i don't say it is not complex, but i do say reducing uk foreign policy to transactional only is a huge problem. it is how we end up with dirty money, the russian dirty money problem we have got in london, an inflated housing market, and all the money rushing both into politics and other things. in a speech you gave recently, you said those who think that the us and the west are usually to blame for the world's conflicts, you didn't simply say they were wrong, you said that was a farce.

no one suggests that all countries have got things right, and i am certainly not going to suggest that the uk has always got things right, but i am going to defend the human rights architecture that we set up after the second world war, coming out of the pain of the second world war. i do think that broadly the free—market economy that we have created and encouraged the world to develop, the free society that we defended, democratic norms, are a fantastic development. and i say that against the backdrop... do you mean, david, that corbynism, in terms of foreign policy, the belief that the west generally is to blame, that the united states are often behind the conflict, if not the direct cause of it, you've buried that, have you? that's over? yes. both our two main political parties are in fact broad coalitions and that is generally the ingredient

to running the country, certainly it is for the labour party. perhaps because of my own background, iam nervous of hiving off to the extremes of any political tradition. keir starmer is, you said at the beginning, is a friend. real friend or political friend ? he's a good friend. you know, in the sense that... ..he... ..is a lawyer of my generation, he is a bit older than me but my generation. we are actually now in the same set of chambers, as door tenants, we are not practising barristers, of course. but you carry on, don't you, even... yeah, you sort of have an association with that set of chambers. you even went to the recent game together, didn't you? we did go to the recent game together. incredibly rash, a gooner and a spurs fan. it was a terrible evening because you should not take your boss to a football game when your boss's team

is trashed, and spurs won 3—0. keir is very serious about his football and was not a happy man. i will not share with you the expletives that he used but he did use a few during the course of the game. and you were not instantly demoted? it could easily have happened. now, he is good on the football pitch, as well as a supporter. much better than me. i keep being told how good he is. well, forgive the obvious link, you know what people say about him, he misses open goals. as a politician, he doesn't score many goals. no, i don't know about that. did they say that? i would say... he had to let it be known that he told the shadow cabinet to stop describing him as boring. let's get back to basics on this. labour was on its knees after that election in 2019. we had been written off for another decade. and two and a half years later, we are back in contention. that is a phenomenal turnaround,

given, by the way, that for two of those years we have been in a pandemic. i mean, i think he takes quite a lot of credit for that achievement. so, yes, in the day—to—day of politics and the hurly—burly, you've got to come to terms with a knock around and the leader of the opposition, it is the toughestjob in british politics, whoever is doing it. but on the big questions, has he got the labour party back in contention? yes. had he sorted out some of the internal problems? yes. is there the beginnings of a policy offer? as we head to the next conference and back into the heat of the political season, which begins shortly, about 18 months out with the general election. absolutely. all of those things are in place, it is now important, by the way, that labour don't blow it. are you too scared, all of you, to take positions? let's take brexit, for example. i'm not scared.

no—one thinks i am scared. no one is scared on the backbenches, but i wonder now. with brexit, there are a lot of your supporters who want you to stand up and say, you lied to us, the electorate, the whole project has failed, look what's happened. and, instead, the labour party position is, well, we must get brexit to work. now, hang on a minute, look,... i was on one side of that debate, very passionately. the remain side. i was one of the leaders of the second referendum campaign. we fought that battle for many years and we lost. the definition of madness is doing the same thing over and over again and not learning from the mistakes. i've said that i think, i do think the decision to leave the european union and to brexit in the way that we did, was revolutionary in what is broadly an incremental country. but i am passionate that the labour party has to govern for both those who voted leave

and those who voted remain. i was very saddened that after boris struck his deal, which i don't think was a great deal, he has appeared to govern solely for those that voted leave. now, let's look at this 50th birthday. what do you want for it? have you decided what present you want? beyond a labour government. don't say a labour government. oh, my god. my brother has just bought me a ring, is itan aura ring? i haven't got it set up yet but it is a ring that can help you, you know, know your paces, how many steps you have walked, and how you have slept and stuff, and i think probably i should get that set up and use it because i am quite excited by that present. i don't want anything, really, at this stage in my life. i would like a labour government. and the second thing is i want, you know, in that sort of way that parents of my era do,

you want your kids to be happy and their well—being to be attended, that is what you want more than anything. do you think if you get thatjob, will that bring you the contentment? or are you just the sort of person who is always going to be beating yourself up a bit? er... i will definitely be contented if i become foreign secretary, and staggered and amazed, it would be a huge privilege. i've got to say, i don't tend to beat myself up so much about things in public life. like a lot of folk, i am beating myself about how good a dad i am, how good a husband i am, have i spoken to that friend recently, have i been generous enough to family still back in the caribbean who are having a hard time, financially? that's the sort of stuff that gets under my skin, it is actually not the day—to—day and the hurly—burly of politics, it really isn't. thank goodness. it would be tough to do the job if it was. david lammy, shadow foreign secretary, thanks.

thanks a lot, nick. listening to david lammy pick his words carefully at time, talking about things he believes in, it's a reminder of the dramatic change in his political life, from the man who used his voice from the backbenches to argue simply for what he believed in. and a man now who is involved in not only externally is potentially our next foreign secretary, but also inside the labour party as well. the journey to being what he hopes, a member of a sensible, disciplined government, is quite a tricky one. thank you for watching.

hello. there's a lot of dry weather around today with some places staying completely dry. still keep on guard for darker clouds on the horizon. a few showers scattered across the country as we've seen so far today and will continue into the afternoon. main rain bearing weatherfront we had through yesterday. that's pushing its way off into the continent, bringing a drop in temperature after record breaking heat. a few weather fronts weakly tangled across the uk. one, a focus for a few showers. yorkshire down through towards east wales and the midlands as we go through lunch, and into the afternoon, eastern areas most prone to some of the heaviest showers. in the west, though, after starting with showers, many places becoming dry longer spells of sunshine and a brighter afternoon in the north of scotland compared with this morning. temperatures here a little on the low side, but quite a brisk breeze because of that. we've got winds gusting 30, 35 miles an hour, and that wind will freshen a bit further through tonight, bringing further batches of showery rain across scotland. maybe the odd one into northern ireland, northern england. much of england, wales, though the daytime showers fade away and it will be a dry night for most.

and so as we start monday morning commute, temperatures similar to recent mornings, around 10 to 13 degrees. a dry bright start for the vast majority could be a bit more cloud. isolated showers drift its way southwards across england and wales during the morning. more showers at times in scotland, northern ireland, but actually, very few in number. vast majority will have a dry day on monday, and temperatures 16 to 18 degrees across the north but feeling a bit fresher in the cloudier spots and the breeze, low 20s in the south. as we go through into tuesday, high pressure is trying to swing and take milderair, waiting to come round it, but it will come with a lot of cloud. so after a bright start, we'll see cloud thicken up western scotland, northern ireland, patchy rain later in the day. odd isolated shower across some other western areas, many places having a dry day, best of the sunshine to the south and the east. and that area of high pressure will slowly and only slowly nudge its way in as we go through the week. still some weather fronts and breezy conditions toppling around the north, but eventually, temperatures rising.

at the moment, we've got the warmth across europe where we've seen record breaking heat. notice those warmer colours depart, turns cooler, the blue colours relative to normal, whereas we start to warm up relative to normalfor this stage injuly. showing up on our city forecast for cardiff and london temperatures mid 20s later in the week with the best of the sunshine. always cloudy in scotland, northern ireland, but not desperately chilly. temperatures above where we should be.

this is bbc news with the latest headlines for viewers in the uk and around the world. in eastern ukraine — further fighting for control of lysycha nsk. the ukrainian army rejects russia's claims that the city is encircled. and passengers around the world face more travel disruption, as staff shortages continue to cause major problems. thousands of residents of australia's biggest city, sydney, have been ordered to evacuate their homes because of torrential rain and the threat of flooding. why the us supreme court's abortion decision is having an impact thousands of miles away — here in the uk. we had to call the police because protesters were shouting so loudly outside one of our clinics.

there are plenty of groups with a heart and a passion to see abortion overturned in this country, to make abortion history.