The shadow foreign secretary, David Lammy, has taken his green diplomatic policy for a test spin in Brazil this month in the hope that “climate justice” can serve as an international rallying cry for a future Labour government.
In an interview with the Guardian, Lammy said a Labour victory at the next general election would allow Keir Starmer to build a partnership for radical climate action with Brazil’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, before the UN’s Cop30 climate summit in Belém in 2025.
“It could be a very exciting, progressive moment where they could jointly move forward in a deep and long-lasting way, not just for the sake of our two countries but for the sake of the planet,” Lammy said. “The global community has been missing the UK being serious about these issues for some time.”
Lammy is attempting to put clear green space between Labour’s foreign policy and that of the Conservative government led by Rishi Sunak, who was criticised for initially intending to skip last year’s climate summit in Sharm el-Sheikh, cutting the UK’s aid budget to 0.5% of GDP when he was chancellor, and approving a raft of new oil and gas drilling licences in the North Sea.
