Fred

Inside the lambda expression you can have a comprehension to unpack the keys list to get the same sort of uplet as your “manual” example, like this:

>>> items = [{"core_name": "a", "label": "b"},{"core_name": "c", "label": "d"}, ]
>>> keys = ["core_name", "label"]

>>> tuple(items[0][k] for k in keys)
('a', 'b')

>>> sorted(items, key=lambda d: tuple(d[k] for k in keys))
[{'core_name': 'a', 'label': 'b'}, {'core_name': 'c', 'label': 'd'}]