The Foreign Office is in trouble if David Lammy takes charge

The heart sinks at the latest thoughts espoused by David Lammy, the shadow foreign secretary, on a future Labour government’s foreign policy. Lammy has penned a 4,000 word essay for Foreign Affairs on his vision of pursuing ‘progressive realism’ for Britain on the international stage. It is a less than catchy phrase that amounts to little substance. 

According to Lammy, Labour’s foreign agenda will attempt to meld together the policy realism of Ernest Bevin, the post-war Labour foreign secretary who helped found Nato, with the ethical foreign policy of Robin Cook, who served as Tony Blair’s foreign secretary when New Labour took power in 1997. Lammy lays it on thick, praising Bevin for making the argument for Britain to acquire nuclear weapons. This would be the same David Lammy who in 2016 declared that, as a Christian, he could not in all conscience vote to renew Trident – a stance may have slipped his memory.