Who is the deputy prime minister David Lammy?

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The deputy prime minister told LBC's Nick Ferrari at Breakfast that Andy Burnham's candidacy for the Makerfield by-election does not mean that the Greater Manchester mayor will challenge for party leadership.

Mr Lammy said on Monday: "A vote for Andy Burnham, if he is the candidate, is a vote for Labour in the Makerfield by-election. So I will be supporting him. All of us will be supporting him. Because what we don't want is Reform winning."

Sir Keir has come under immense pressure following Labour's poor performance in the local elections at the beginning of May, with the party losing more than 1,300 seats.

In the days that followed:

• Sir Keir gave a speech to Labour members, urging them to back his cause,
• More than Labour 80 MPs called on Sir Keir to step down - while several ministers resigned,
• The King's Speech to mark the State Opening of Parliament was undermined by news that Wes Streeting was about to resign as health secretary.

While it appeared that the news about potential leadership candidate Mr Burnham was another test of Sir Keir's leadership, Mr Lammy has said that it is business as usual in Downing Street.

"Let's be clear. There is no contest. There's a lot of speculation about contest," Mr Lammy said. "We've had some own goals this week," he said.

"We're in trouble. Let us get back to unifying and delivering on behalf of the British people."

As part of his exclusive interview, Mr Lammy said that Gordon Brown has taken his Downing Street office and also mentioned another policy that parents and guardians could face jail time if their children break the law.

David Lammy profile

David Lammy's promotion to deputy prime minister has been the fruit of a long period of work in politics that started back in 2000 when he was elected as MP for Tottenham, the London neighbourhood where he grew up.

"My dad used to take me to Spurs, and it was incredibly special back in those days as there were not many black dads doing that," he told the BBC. Growing up, he loved singing, once performing on Songs of Praise, as well as drama and was also a hard-working student. However, he described having seen his father walk out on the family when he was young, never to return, and forcing his mother to look after the family alone.

Mr Lammy left north London for Peterborough when he was a teenager to attend boarding school and went on to become a lawyer in the nineties, after graduating from Harvard Law. But soon the dedicated Tottenham champion, and enthusiastic Spurs supporter, was back in his old ends.

After entering the Commons aged 27, he impressed Tony Blair, the then prime minister, who appointed him to a junior ministerial position, which he served through to Labour losing power to the Tory / Lib Dem coalition in 2010.

During this time, he was cast onto the backbenches of successive shadow cabinets, having not found favour with the Ed Miliband or Jeremy Corbyn leadership.

But Mr Lammy became known in the 2010s for his work in fighting for justice for the Windrush generation as well as other race-related issues in the UK, such as the treatment of Black, Asian, and Minority Ethnic (BAME) people in the Criminal Justice System.

He has spoken about the issue being personal to him, with his parents both being of the Windrush generation, who moved from Guyana to the UK in the 1960s. He also came to prominence for his passionate work in fighting for the victims of the Grenfell Tower disaster in 2017.

In 2020, Sir Keir brought him back into the fold and made him foreign secretary, pressing for the UK to acknowledge Palestinian statehood during this time, before being made deputy PM, the justice secretary, and lord chancellor.

A big, and divisive, step has been to press for the justice system to move away from juries - an ongoing debate.

Mr Lammy has said his Aunt May, a family friend, predicted he would become Britain's first black prime minister.

While his name has not been linked to those succeeding Sir Keir Starmer for No 10, he has almost fulfilled his grandmother's prophecy in becoming deputy PM.