Donald Trump's win could leave Keir Starmer stroking his chin (Image: Getty)

       A “neo-Nazi-sympathising sociopath” who is a “racist” and “dangerous clown” is once again going to occupy the White House, bringing with him his soft spot for the Ku Klux Klan.

       That’s what our Foreign Secretary, the inestimable David Lammy, might just have been thinking as he watched state after state turn Republican red in the US presidential election.

       After all, Mr Lammy said all of those things from Labour’s backbenches in 2018, when Donald Trump was comfortably into his first term in the Oval Office.

       The fact that it is now his job to represent Britain on the world stage, coupled with the reality that the most powerful man on that stage will now be Mr Trump, raises serious questions.

       The most obvious being, does he still think that The Donald is all of those things? There’s reason to think he does, as he refused to apologise in particular for the “neo-Nazi-sympathising sociopath” remark in a BBC interview as late as July this year, when he’d just been made Foreign Secretary.

       He did, however, assure Naga Munchetty that “Donald Trump has the thickest of skins”.

       Lammy isn’t alone in the Cabinet in his criticism of Mr Trump. Wes Streeting once described him as an “odious, sad little man”. And he’s in even better company in the wider Labour Party, with Emily Thornbury and Sadiq Khan keen to line up behind such sentiments.

       Yesterday we saw a change of tune. Mr Lammy joined Sir Keir Starmer in posting a rousing congratulations to X (formerly Twitter), in which Mr Lammy praised the UK-US “special relationship”, adding: “We look forward to working with you and J D Vance in the years ahead.”

       The fear for Britain is that a man who has kept up a feud with Rosie O’Donnell since a 2006 beauty contest might not have quite as thick a hide as is hoped. There is every reason to believe for all his qualities, The Donald may be a man who holds a grudge.

       Should we select our Foreign Secretary based upon the caprice of American leaders? Absolutely not. But we also probably shouldn’t appoint a man who spends his time regurgitating tired tropes befitting deranged university students and insincere American activists.

       We certainly shouldn’t appoint one who actually believes this sort of thing.

       Let’s not forget that Mr Lammy is the same political philosopher who told Andrew Marr that he “wasn’t strong enough” in his comparison between Winston Churchill’s struggle against Adolf Hitler and his own battle against Tory Brexiteers.

       It’s a good sign that the Labour Government has congratulated Donald Trump.

       But I doubt Mr Trump, whose son-in-law is Jewish, and who was an unambiguously robust ally of Israel, appreciated being told he sympathised with the perpetrators of the Holocaust in 2017 when Mr Lammy felt like weighing in on a potential presidential visit to the UK.

       If I were Sir Keir, I’d be considering sending Lammy on a short journey to the backbenches, from which he can sound as silly as he likes.