[16] 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 (MP), Bernie Grant.

[21] In 2003, Lammy was appointed by Blair as a Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State in the Department for Constitutional Affairs[22] and while a member of the Government, voted in favour of authorisation for Britain to invade Iraq in 2003.

[22] 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 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 Lord Mandelson was Secretary of State.

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".

[33] 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.

[34] 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.

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.

[57][58] He took his first international trip as foreign secretary[59][60] meeting his counterparts in Poland (Radosław Sikorski),[61] Germany (Annalena Baerbock)[62] and Sweden (Tobias Billström).

[64] Lammy stated that the UK government wanted to "reset" its relations with the European Union,[60][64] with their plans including a new joint security pact covering defence, energy policies, the climate crisis, pandemic prevention and illegal immigration.

[68] After receiving assurances of its neutrality, Lammy announced the resumption of British funding to the UNRWA, stating that the humanitarian situation in Gaza was "desperate" and "no other agency" could deliver aid on the scale needed.

[71] On 14 August 2024, he met Saudi Arabia's Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud in London to discuss the growing UK–Saudi partnership.

Lammy wrote on X: "We'll work together on shared defence, economic & security interests, including pressing for de-escalation in the region and a ceasefire and hostage release deal in Gaza.

[76][77] Following the UK's decision to relinquish control of the Chagos Islands, Lammy asserted that this didn't signal a shift in the government's position on other overseas territories.

[80] On 11 August 2011, in an address to Parliament, Lammy attributed part of the cause for England's riots of a few days earlier to destructive "cultures" that had emerged under the prevailing policies.

[81] He also stated that legislation restricting the degree of violence that parents are allowed to use when disciplining their children was partly to blame for current youth culture, that had contributed to the riots.

[92] In January 2016, Lammy was commissioned by then-Prime Minister David Cameron to report on the effects of racial discrimination and disadvantage on the procedures of the police, courts, prisons and the probation service.

Lammy published his report in September 2017, concluding that prosecutions against some BAME suspects should be delayed or dropped outright to mitigate racial bias.

[99] Lammy recorded a Channel 4 documentary for Remembrance Sunday called The Unremembered: Britain's Forgotten War Heroes, which was broadcast on 10 November 2019.

The report stated that up to 54,000 casualties of "certain ethnic groups" did not receive the same remembrance treatment as white soldiers who had died and another 350,000 military personnel recruited from east Africa and Egypt were not commemorated by name or even at all.

[107] In April 2019, Lammy was criticised for saying his comparison of the European Research Group (which consists of Conservative MPs) to Nazis and proponents of the South African apartheid was "not strong enough".

[108] In late 2023, following an IDF bombing of the Jabalia refugee camp, Lammy commented that the strike was wrong "when it comes to the ethics," but also that "if there is a military objective it can be legally justifiable".

On a trip to Washington D.C. in May 2024, Lammy spoke at the Hudson Institute where he described himself as a "good Christian" and "small-c conservative" who had common cause with the U.S. Republican Party.

[112] Lammy wrote in a Substack post in September 2024 that "Azerbaijan has been able to liberate territory it lost in the early 1990s" in reference to the 2023 Azerbaijani offensive in Nagorno-Karabakh, which resulted in the exodus of the Armenian population.

He points out Scandinavian countries such as Sweden as examples of where governments have successfully made this happen, which he states has also helped increase gender equality.

[129] In 2017, writing in The Guardian, Lammy argued that Comic Relief perpetuated problematic stereotypes of Africa, and that they had a responsibility to use its powerful position to move the debate on in a more constructive way by establishing an image of African people as equals.

[131][132] In 2018, in response to Lammy's comments and the backlash to Sheeran's video, Comic Relief announced they would take steps towards change by halting their use of celebrities for appeals.

[133] In February 2019, Lammy criticised Stacey Dooley for photographs she posted on social media of her trip to Uganda for Comic Relief, and said that "the world does not need any more white saviours", and that she was "perpetuating 'tired and unhelpful stereotypes' about Africa".

[136] The donations received for the Red Nose Day broadcast in March 2019 fell by £8 million and the money raised that year was the lowest since 2007, which some have blamed on Lammy's remarks.