Pictured on her official website smiling on a country walk with her golden retriever, Katie Lam looks every inch the traditional Conservative MP. But make no mistake: this is a very modern breed of Tory, and one whose rise gives a clue to the current direction of UK politics.
Still only 34 and in parliament for little over a year, Lam is named almost ubiquitously by fellow Conservatives as a likely future leader – even, some venture, a direct replacement for Kemi Badenoch.
Lam does have the sort of CV almost designed to impress Tory constituency associations, with its route from state school to Cambridge, Goldman Sachs, then stints as an aide in Downing Street and the Home Office.
It is when you look at Lam’s X account that the picture become more complicated. Just about every single message is about migration or grooming gangs, with a heavy focus on crimes committed by asylum seekers. “We already have British sex criminals,” one message reads. “We don’t need any more!”
Although this is in part her brief – Lam is a shadow Home Office minister as well as a whip – the sheer intensity of the focus on problems supposedly caused by migrants or people from minority ethnic communities is striking, while the language is often of a sort that only a few years ago would have been the preserve of hard-right populism.
It is a striking trajectory for someone whose socialist great-great-grandfather fled the Nazis in Germany, whose grandparents met while delivering leaflets for the Labour party, and who was herself a deputy chief of staff to Boris Johnson, now so reviled by right-leaning Tories for his relaxed approach to migration.
One senior Conservative who recalls Lam from her time in Johnson’s No 10 says that while her job was more administrative than policy-focused, she showed no signs then of anti-migration zeal.
“When she did weigh in on policy, it was standard, middle-of-the-road Tory stuff,” they said. “There was no evidence of her thinking that before. But people can change their minds.”
Allies of Lam insist the idea of a Damascene conversion is unfair and that as a Brexit supporter she has always supported a more robust approach to borders and legal sovereignty.
This was seemingly the case by the time Lam worked as an aide to the then home secretary, Suella Braverman. One contemporary recalls that while Lam’s primary focus was national security, she was known to support the UK leaving the European convention on human rights.
And as another former colleague noted, even if Lam has changed her mind, she is far from alone in the party. “You are hearing all sorts of people saying all sorts of things you wouldn’t have heard before, like Kemi saying some cultures are inferior to others. And Robert Jenrick has certainly been on a journey. But that’s also part of a vibe shift in the country as a whole,” the ex-colleague said.
Katie Lam speaking in the House of Commons. Photograph: House of Commons
There is more consensus about Lam herself, with even those unimpressed with some of her views agreeing she is dedicated, clever and a fun colleague, as well as being quietly but intensely ambitious.
“She laughs a lot, and she’s a warm character, but you piece it all together – president of the Cambridge Union, Goldman Sachs, No 10 – you realise that she’s very, very driven,” one former colleague said.
It seems this has always been the case. Growing up, Lam’s Surrey comprehensive did not offer Latin or Greek so she studied independently and went on to take classics at Cambridge.
Aside from politics, she is an accomplished lyricist and scriptwriter, co-writing five musicals with a childhood friend, including a well-reviewed recent version of The Railway Children.
A fellow Conservative MP calls Lam “super-impressive” and the ideal fit for what they argue is a party and a country moving decisively to the right on migration.
“Katie is a good messenger – she’s obviously not a rightwing skinhead. But she is genuine,” they said. “She doesn’t come to this from an old-school rightwing head space. She is responding to what is happening.”
Others are more sceptical. “It’s a sign of the party’s difficulties that she’s being talked about as a potential leader after just 15 months,” one senior Tory said. “There’s no doubt that she’s personable and clever, but from what I’ve seen she hasn’t really set things on fire.”
In this fast-changing Tory world, Lam potentially faces another barrier to advancement given her close links to what one Conservative called “the old regime” of Johnson, now so comprehensively rejected by the party.
There is, of course, another element to this, one often forgotten when Conservatives discuss future leaders: the world beyond the party.
A Liberal Democrat source said traditional Tory voters in so-called “blue wall” seats, dozens of which were won by Ed Davey’s party at the election, would be “bewildered” by the idea of Lam being touted as the future of conservatism.
“The fact rising stars in the Conservative party believe they can win back the blue wall with a Nigel Farage tribute act on social media shows how dramatically out of touch they have become,” they said.
