David Lammy has insisted he was not some “whippersnapper” like a young Boris Johnson when he entered Parliament over two decades ago at the age of 27.
The Labour MP - now Keir Starmer’s Shadow Foreign Secretary - was first elected to Parliament at the 2000 election, succeeding Bernie Grant as the MP for Tottenham.
Within a couple of years he was already serving in Tony Blair’s Labour Government and also held ministerial posts in Gordon Brown’s administration.
One article at the time described him as one of Parliament’s more "glamorous MPs”.
Asked how he looked back on his rising-star status, the Labour frontbencher told an audience at Queen Mary University of London he has learned not to care too much about what “journalists write about me”.
It “wasn’t easy” arriving in Parliament “being young and black and from a working-class background”, he added. “There weren’t many folk like me.”
He said reporters would say “silly things” to him, adding: “Not really understanding that if you’re from the kind of background I have - a lot of my peers spent time in prison, have struggled with mental health.
“I came from a broken home. I was raised by a single mum. That’s what I brought to Parliament aged 27. I was not some young whippersnapper like a young Boris Johnson.”
The Labour MP added: “In those early years you can stand as a Labour politician, you can look at your opposite number and you can see these Etonians and these Oxbridge graduates. You can be rather intimidated that somehow this place is more their place than your place.
“Today I’m very happy to stand up being the son of a single mother, and know what it’s like to go back home and the fridge is empty because all the lighting has gone off because we couldn’t afford the electricity bill.
“I’ve relatives in one of the poorest countries in the Western hemisphere I still send remittances over for. All of that is what I bring to the table when I stand up in Parliament.”
Speaking on Thursday evening the Shadow Foreign Secretary also said the job of a Labour Government would be to reconnect Britain once again to the outside world.
“Not just with our friends and colleagues in Europe, but on things like development aid where it has been cut back to the bone.”
Asked whether Labour would bring back the 0.7% overseas aid target - abandoned by the Tories - he replied: “I’ve said over and over again… we want to go back to 0.7% as soon as the fiscal environment allows.”
Mr Lammy also warned against the “resurfacing of populism” in Britain and a rise in the “denigration of experts”.
“In our midst we’re seeing populism come back, gripping democratic nations and eroding expertise,” he said.
“This is time for policy experts to speak up, to be heard, to engage with political parties like mine.”
