Lammy is endangering our national security

Telegraph

21-05-2025

When David Lammy, our gaffe-prone Foreign Secretary, talks about 'egregious actions and rhetoric', as he did when condemning Israel's actions in Gaza, he could equally be talking about his own unimpressive track record since taking up residence in King Charles Street.
His history of uttering gratuitous insults about US president Donald Trump, whom he famously dubbed ' a neo-Nazi-sympathising sociopath ' in 2018, has effectively made him persona non grata within the Trump administration's inner sanctum.
The disinclination of serious players, such as secretary of state Marco Rubio and special envoy Steve Witkoff, was clearly evident last month when they pulled out of the London Ukraine conference Lammy had organised.
This left the foreign secretary in the ignominious position of having to withdraw from his own conference.
Then there is his hapless handling of the Chagos Islands sell-out, where the dire national security implications of placing a prized military asset like Diego Garcia at the mercy of hostile states like China, Russia and Iran seems to have passed him by. Lammy's commitment to supporting a politically motivated attempt to prosecute Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu for war crimes has caused a major rift in UK-Israel relations, with the Israeli premier declining to meet with Britain's foreign secretary when he visited Jerusalem last year.
Few will be surprised by Lammy's decidedly underwhelming performance at the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office given that he has struggled under the illusion that Libya in North Africa borders Syria in the eastern Mediterranean. Then there was the time when he congratulated Azerbaijan for forcing more than 100,000 Armenians to flee their homes in the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh, a clear-cut case of ethnic cleansing if ever there was one.
Even by his own pitiful standards, Lammy's egregious track record puts him on course to become the country's worst foreign secretary in living memory, on a par with the equally ineffectual Robin Cook, whose devotion to his so-called 'ethical foreign policy' rendered his contribution to world affairs largely irrelevant.
Lammy's decision, therefore, to jump on the anti-Zionist bandwagon by suspending trade talks with Israel over its 'intolerable' military operations in Gaza is entirely in keeping with his world view. Rather than condemning the real architects of Gaza's misery, the Iranian-backed Hamas jihadis who started the conflict with their murderous October 7 assault on Israel, Lammy has gone for the easy option.
Joining forces with such luminaries of global diplomacy as Kaja Kallas, the EU's high representative for foreign affairs and security policy, Lammy accused the current Israeli government of isolating Israel from its friends and partners around the world through its efforts to destroy Hamas. The fact that Israel is fighting against an organisation that is proscribed in the UK because of its terrorist activities appears lost on Lammy, as is Hamas's obvious delight that the British Government has decided to publicly lambast one of its closest allies in the Middle East.
Instead, the Foreign Secretary feels more at home siding with other dedicated anti-Israel activists, such as the governors of King's College, Cambridge, who have decided to divest from arms companies in protest, in part, at Israel's continued military offensive in Gaza.
What Lammy and his ilk fail to understand is that, given the determination of Hamas and its Iranian backers to destroy the Jewish state, the Israelis have little alternative other than to maintain their military campaign in Gaza. Given the existential threat Israel faces from Hamas and its backers, perhaps Lammy should consider what other country would allow a terrorist organisation that had perpetrated the worst atrocity in its history to continue operating on its doorstep?
But that would be to indulge in statesmanship, a quality as far removed from Lammy's skill set as his grasp of geography. So, rather than holding Hamas to account for committing murderous acts of terrorism, the British Government now finds itself in the invidious position of castigating a key ally for seeking to defend the Israeli people from suffering further acts of Islamist-inspired terrorism.
By adopting such a fundamentally flawed policy towards the Gaza conflict, moreover, Lammy is inadvertently placing our own security in jeopardy. By ignoring the threat posed by a sophisticated terrorist organisation like Hamas, London is sending a message to other Islamist-inspired entities, such as the Islamic Republic of Iran, that it has no interest in curbing their activities.
It is surely no coincidence that, at the same time that Lammy decided to pick a fight with Israel, the security services are reporting a marked upsurge in Iranian terror activity in the UK.
In terms of safeguarding the security of the British people, focusing our efforts on confronting Iran would make far more sense, with designating Iran's Revolutionary Guards, the group responsible for overseeing Tehran's anti-Western operations, a good place to start.
If Lammy were to concentrate his efforts on denouncing Iran as a pariah state, as opposed to Israel, then people might start to take him seriously, and not as the joke he is today.