Yahoo News How undiplomatic diplomat David Lammy has criticised world leaders
Lord Carrington, Margaret Thatcher’s first foreign secretary, once offered a canny word of advice to future incumbents of his office.
The problem, he explained to Tony Blair’s former chief of staff Jonathan Powell, was that people form the opinion that “you shouldn’t really have much to do with foreigners, foreigners are thoroughly unreliable, and if you do get on with them, you’re selling out to them. It doesn’t seem to have occurred to them that surely it is better to get on with people than to quarrel with them”.
Where then, does that leave Sir Keir Starmer’s new Foreign Secretary David Lammy, who has never been backwards in coming forwards when it comes to lambasting the global leaders he might now be compelled to work alongside now the election is over? Here are just a few of his choice remarks:
On Donald Trump
Donald Trump could return to the White House as US president, and Mr Lammy has held meetings with his team. However, he has been scathing in his criticism of Trump.
2018: “Trump is not only a woman-hating, neo-Nazi-sympathising sociopath, he is also a profound threat to the international order that has been the foundation of Western progress for so long… I will be one of tens of thousands on the streets, protesting against our government’s capitulation to this tyrant in a toupée.”
2021: “Donald Trump is an enemy of democracy. Every British politician who failed to condemn his actions after the presidential election should issue an apology tonight.”
2021: “Donald Trump’s entire presidency has been a reign of recklessness, narcissism and delusion.”
2021: “If any president in the history of the United States of America deserved to be impeached twice, it is Donald Trump.”
On Marine Le Pen
The first round of voting in the French elections suggested Marine Le Pen’s National Rally party could soon seize power in the French parliament, meaning Mr Lammy could have to work with the populist Right-wing party. However, he has not been complimentary about her in the past.
2017: “We don’t want the xenophobia of Farage and Le Pen in our country. We must stand up to them and their toxic views. First America, now Le Pen. This virus is contagious, just as it was in the 1930s … But some of us don’t forget our history and will stand up and fight this s— until our last breath.”
2018: “Malevolent figures like [US presidential aide] Steve Bannon, Donald Trump, Nigel Farage and Marine Le Pen want to drag us into the gutter.”
On Viktor Orbán
Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán is another international politician that Mr Lammy could find himself having to work with, despite criticising him in the past. Even more awkwardly, Hungary currently holds the presidency of the Council of the European Union.
2019: “Farage meeting Bannon. Trump retweeting Hopkins. Orbán puppeting Putin. Fascism rests on an international network of disinformation, propaganda and coordination. The biggest irony is their dependence on the very globalisation they chastise.”
2020: “We have already seen Boris Johnson attack the courts and other democratic norms in the UK. For his aide, Tim Montgomerie, to lavish praise on Viktor Orbán, who is dismantling democracy in Hungary, shows how dangerous this government could be. We must do all we can to resist.”·
2021: “Rolling out the red carpet for Viktor Orbán shows [Boris Johnson’s] twisted priorities. Two illiberal nationalists hoarding power by taking away power from the courts. All they are missing is Donald Trump.”
On Benjamin Netanyahu
As Foreign Secretary, Mr Lammy’s job will include dealing with Israel and the Palestinians over the continuing conflict in Gaza. However, he made clear which side he was on when he said that “international law must be upheld” after the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court called for a warrant to be issued for the arrest of Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, for alleged war crimes.
2024: “Of course, the Palestinian people deserve a state and if they don’t, the consequence of that is either one state in which Benjamin Netanyahu would have to explain how Palestinians and Israelis live side-by-side with equal rights, or no state, in which what he’s really saying is occupation and siege continues.”
2024: (on Netanyahu’s arrest warrant) “Arrest warrants are not a conviction or a determination of guilt, but they reflect the evidence and judgment of the prosecutor about the grounds for individual criminal responsibility.”
