David Lammy: 'I was spat on by skinheads... but the flag-wavers today aren't bovver boys'

The deputy PM tells Rachel Sylvester he is troubled that ordinary people have lined up behind far-right agitator Tommy Robinson

- Rachel Sylvester

(Suzanne Plunkett/Getty)

David Lammy was working in his new office at the Ministry of Justice when far-right agitator Tommy Robinson led about 150,000 of his flag-waving followers down Whitehall. As the deputy prime minister looked into the crowd, he felt deeply anxious.

"The troubling side of it was that some of the folk I saw did not appear to look like the kind of bovver boy National Front folk that I grew up with. There were aspects of the gathering that appeared to be ordinary people who had joined up with something," he says.

The social and demographic mix was not the only concerning issue for the former foreign secretary. "I'm also aware that there are external countries like Russia manipulating algorithms, using chatbots and other instruments to stir conflict and division in our country - and that worries me greatly," he says "I do know that there have been events in Britain where it's very clear that our authoritarian opponents have sought to stir and have sought to encourage division."

As Labour gathers for its conference in Liverpool this week, the stakes could not be higher. Keir Starmer, fighting for his leadership, is seeking to frame politics as a "battle for the soul of the country", a defining struggle between toxic division and mainstream decency.

For Lammy, it is personal. His parents were immigrants who came to the UK from Guyana. As a child in Tottenham, north London, in the 1970s he was all too aware of bubbling racial tensions. "It was the era of Daley Thompson, Fatima Whitbread and Linford Christie wrapping themselves in the flag and the joy you felt at these wonderful athletes achieving so much," he says. "But I also hold in my mind's eye being spat at by skinheads and a bottle being thrown at my mother, my sister and me by a racist at Camden Town tube station. There was a real fear."