David Lammy is anything but a man of the people

Telegraph

2 days ago

It was the most stomach-churning political photograph of the summer. That was until, deliciously, it began to disassemble. David Lammy, the Foreign Secretary, 'fishing' with JD Vance, the US vice-president, at the start of the 41-year-old's British vacation.
JD had accepted an invitation from Lammy to pop by Chevening, the grace-and-favour house near Sevenoaks in Kent used by foreign secretaries, for a spot of fishing and then tea in the drawing room. I saw the photos and swore I could hear the distinct sounds of gurgling and spluttering, such as emanates from an ancient bathtub as the waters drawn by gravity exit the plughole and descend into the deepest reaches of some ancient plumbing system. That was, in fact, the hideous noise of Lammy sucking up to Vance.
Lammy is on that revolting conveyor belt of nauseating genuflection with which the Trump administration has managed to bewitch the world. Let's hope it doesn't spread farther than the Trumpaline circus. God forbid you're in a rural pub, you hear an American voice and suddenly start fawning over the brash tourists, telling them how much you love their movies, cars, doughnuts and grande lattes – and before you know it you've lent them your fishing rod.
Not that David Lammy is a fisherman. That much is clear from the photographs, as he stands by the 18th-century-constructed ornamental lake holding a rod like a man clutching a saucepan who's lost an oven.
Neither is he dressed for the part, in comfy black shoes, beige trousers and dark blue shirt. Vance at least looks like he couldn't give a damn – a stance and attitude that appears to serve him well.
And they're standing far too close together, of course. You don't fish like that. Fishing is solitary. Or you fish while your pal sits on the bank eating a sandwich. And only weirdos fish for carp in ornamental lakes. Muddy carp aren't nice on toast, so it's not worth their torture of being caught. The only people who fish for carp in Britain are illegal eastern European migrants who are fed up with being arrested for catching swans.
Thus, the flunkies set up the photo. And Lammy does his gruelling best-buddies-with-Vance act, which must sit so deeply uncomfortably with him. He's a man, after all, most at home in front of a radio microphone, mouthing off about Right-wing monstrosities. He was lucky, though, to be given the mouthpiece of LBC, as his garbled rantings were little better than the spewings I used to listen to that emanated from the pirate radio stations of west London.
Except that Lammy, ex-SOAS London and a spell at Harvard, always dreamt of bigger things. Which, unfortunately, were finally gifted to him by a catalogue of shambolic Conservative administrations and a fed-up and gullible electorate.
While he might be more comfortable parading about a stately palace, he now plays the man of the people. And there's no more blokey accoutrement than the fishing rod. Rod in hand, the angler takes to the bank to engage in that most pointless of exploits: to catch and release fish. He returns home for his tea with nothing for the table but tales of weather and traffic congestion.
Lammy's fishing stunt attempts two things: hands across the Atlantic and to pose as a country person.
One wonders, as Vance prepared for his trip to the Cotswolds and then Scotland, whether Lammy added some factual context to where he would be staying in the ensuing days. Perhaps, as his vulgar cortège passed Banbury, he could look in on the Carrdus, a magnificently old-fashioned English boarding school that Lammy and his chums managed to recently shut down through their infantile VAT raid on private English education.
Or he could stop by at any number of farms and see how the Labour Party's policies on inheritance tax, its lack of interest in food security and general ambivalence to farming are wrecking the sector. Or, indeed, he could have a tour of all the country pubs that are closing, taxed out of existence by this Government.
Perhaps he could highlight the fields across which, thanks to Labour, a person's freedom to ride to hounds following a trail is fast disappearing. And indeed the copses, woods and forests in and around which – if Labour get their way – folk with shotguns will no longer be able to harness a pheasant or a partridge for their cooking pot.
Lammy limply dangles his rod into the weedy waters of the Chevening lake and shows not just the hypocrisy of his country chap stance but also his complete ignorance of country law and rites.
For as we now gloriously and exquisitely know, Lammy was fishing without a licence. Such is the stranglehold of British nanny-statism, that once you're over the age of 13, you cannot fish even on private land without a licence. Grease up to your bombastic, bearded US buddies, rods in hand, and along will come the Environment Agency threatening a £2,500 fine.
Imagine the backstage scrambling once news of this gaffe emerged, the flunkies and flunkettes despatched to make good, the statement then issued saying that Lammy had referred himself to the environment watchdog and that licences were subsequently purchased retrospectively. And there's Vance, tucked up in the Cotswolds and musing on modern Britain, where we tear down statues, limit free speech and where you need a licence to not catch fish.
His rural disaster now framed in glorious technicolour, Lammy has doubtless made a hasty retreat to the Smoke – as far away as possible from lakes, rods and muddy carp.