Joe Biden's past tragedies 'give him empathy that Trump lacks'

Watch: David Lammy says Joe Biden has empathy 'in spades – the opposite to Donald Trump'

• Labour shadow minister David Lammy says Joe Biden has ‘empathy in spades’ – making president-elect ‘absolute opposite’ of Donald Trump

• Lammy points to tragedies of Biden’s past as reason why ‘he cares’

• He tells Yahoo UK’s White Wine Question Time podcast that election of Kamala Harris as vice-president is arguably ‘more important’ – ‘my daughter can dream dreams that weren’t possible before’

• Visit the Yahoo homepage for more stories

Labour shadow minister David Lammy has said Joe Biden’s tragic past means the president-elect has “empathy in spades” – making him the “absolute opposite” of Donald Trump.

Lammy, speaking to Yahoo UK’s White Wine Question Time podcast, hailed Biden’s success over Trump in last week’s presidential election, saying: “He cares.”

In 1972, Biden’s first wife Neilia and their one-year-old daughter Naomi died in a car accident.

In 2015, Biden’s son Beau died of brain cancer. He was 46.

Read more: How Joe Biden’s family tragedy shaped his Washington career

Tottenham MP Lammy told host Kate Thornton of Biden, who he has met twice: “He is a personable, charming, empathetic kind of guy. He cares.

“Of course he cares. He’s a man who’s had massive tragedy in his life, more than most of us: losing his wife, daughter and son. Tragedy.

Listen: Full interview with David Lammy on White Wine Question Time

“You often find when people survive those sorts of things… leave to one side the intellect or whatever the politics is, but that empathy bit, that business to walk in other people’s shoes.

“He’s got that in spades – the absolute opposite to Donald Trump.”

Trump has also experienced family tragedy, losing his brother, Fred Jr, to alcoholism in 1981.

Last year, speaking about his brother’s death in an interview with the Washington Post, Trump made a rare admission of remorse, saying he regretted pressuring his brother over his career.

‘Biden condemned apartheid while UK was looking away’

Lammy recently posted this viral clip of Biden condemning apartheid in 1986.

Apartheid was a system of enforced racial segregation, privileging white people, in South Africa between 1948 and 1991.

Lammy said Biden was speaking out “at a time when people in our own country and others were looking in the other direction and not really seeing [Nelson] Mandela, many of the Black community in South Africa, for who they were: human beings.”

While hailing Biden’s politics, the MP argued the election of running mate Kamala Harris as vice-president was arguably “more important”.

In January, Harris will be the first female, and first Black and first Asian-American, to become vice-president.

Lammy said: “It makes me emotional because my daughter, my beautiful six-year-old daughter, can look at Kamala Harris – who looks like her – and dream dreams that weren’t possible before.

“So it’s a wonderful, wonderful silver lining on a very, very bitter [election campaign].”