Labour's David Lammy has retained his parliamentary seat in Tottenham despite a 20-point drop in his vote share since 2019.

Lammy thanked his campaign group and family in his speech at Alexandra Palace, where the count took place overnight following the general election held on Thursday July 4.

However, pro-Palestine campaigners supporting independent candidate Nandita Lal, who finished third, drowned out the end of the shadow foreign secretary’s victory speech. 

“Tell us about genocide, David?” and “you’re a genocide apologist, Lammy” were shouted while the Tottenham MP described the honour he felt representing the constituency.

Labour supporters chanted his name in response.

Mr Lammy said: “I have never forgotten where I come from, I am from Tottenham, this is my home and it’s been the honour of my life to represent it.”

Stating people had voted for change, and that the Labour Party takes issues such as climate change “seriously”, Lammy concluded: “As I said 22 years ago, I will continue to represent all of the people of Tottenham.”

Asked by the Local Democracy Reporting Service if he thought Labour’s approach to Palestine should change amid the criticism he had received, Mr Lammy said he recognised there was “huge concern” at the loss of life in Gaza. 

He said: “I think that when we look at the results tonight, the Labour Party has done well across the country, they’ve done well in London, people have voted for change and they’ve voted for a range of issues. 

“I do recognise of course there is huge concern at the loss of life in Gaza. Now, if we’re about to take power, we can play our role in bringing about a ceasefire, a ceasefire that we’ve now been calling for since the end of last year.”

The MP had been challenged for abstaining on a ceasefire vote in November 2023, and for failing to sign two early day motions, with one in March calling for an end to arms sales to Israel and the other in May calling on the government to support the International Criminal Court’s recent actions on the issue.

In response to how frequently Gaza was mentioned when canvassing in Tottenham, Lammy said: “I canvassed across Tottenham, it did come up, but by and large people are raising public services and I think you see that reflected in the votes tonight, certainly in the votes that I had.

“Those that stood on that single issue did not do so well relative to the 23,000 majority that I now have.”

Here are the results in full:

  • David Lammy     Labour     23,066 votes     57.5% (-20.3)
  • David Craig     Green     7,632 votes     19% (+14.7)
  • Nandita Lal     Independent     2,348 votes     5.8% (+5.8)
  • Attic Rahman     Conservative     2,320 votes     5.8% (-5.3)
  • Hari Prabu     Liberal Democrat     1,928 votes     4.8% (-0.2)
  • Roger Gravett     Reform UK     1,602 votes     4% (+2.7)
  • Jennifer Obaseki     Worker Party     659 votes     1.6% (+1.6)
  • Andrew Miles     Rejoin EU     306 votes     0.8% (+0.8)
  • Amelia Allao     Christian Peoples Alliance     224 votes     0.6% (+0.6)
  • Pamela Holmes     Communist League     63 votes     0.2% (+0.1)

Turnout was 53%, down 7.3 points on 2019.