Lammy changes her mind in difficult times

“Your invasion is in your own interest, yours alone,” Foreign Minister David Lammy told Vladimir Putin at the UN Security Council last week: “To expand your mafia state into a mafia empire. An empire built on corruption.”

Putin was of course not there. But the world listened. Because it wasn’t just Lammy’s language that broke new boundaries. It was the persona of Lammy himself.

“I speak not only as a British person, as a Londoner and as a foreign secretary,” he said. “I also stand here as a black man whose ancestors were brought out of Africa in chains, at the barrel of a gun, to be enslaved, whose ancestors rose up and fought in a great slave uprising. Imperialism. I know it when I see it. And I will call it out for what it is.”

Around the table sat leaders from Guyana, Ecuador, Algeria, Mozambique and Sierra Leone – the southern countries of the world used to hear British diplomatic nonsense from the mouths of white Etonians, not spoken directly from a black man from Tottenham.

It was an unabashed play on the sympathies of the global south, many of whose leaders have remained dubious about supporting Kiev and who have viewed with suspicion the Western withdrawal of aid to Gaza.

Lammy’s words were at once a defense of the West and an acknowledgment to the billions of impoverished people in our former colonial empires that the West was built on the misery of their ancestors. Not long after he finished, his Polish counterpart, Radek Sikorski, jumped up and hit him on the back.

At that moment I was proud not only of being British, but also of being a member of the Labor Party. Because mobilizing the memory of a Guyanese slave uprising to denigrate Putin was just the latest change Lammy has made in diplomatic weather.

Labor has made a lot of money from the crises it inherited from the Tories: overcrowded prisons, a broken NHS and a spending black hole. At the Foreign Office, the wreckage was less tangible, but no less serious.

There was the legacy of Boris Johnson’s government, which destroyed our relationship with Europe. And the legacy of Liz Truss, who wondered whether the French president was Britain’s friend or enemy.

As for Rishi Sunak’s legacy, it was inertia. It was not lost on the diplomatic corps that Sunak spent an hour live on stage with Elon Musk, but was only able to offer 15 minutes to the president of Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim country, who politely declined.

As a result, much of Lammy’s first hundred days in office have been spent ‘resetting’. The reset with the US was about getting physically close to the roving Secretary of State, Antony Blinken – in Ukraine, Israel and most recently Paris – while establishing clear diplomatic independence and influence over Washington.

For example, during the current flare-up between Israel and Lebanon, Britain was the first major power to call for a ceasefire, recruiting France and the US, along with 21 other countries, to this call. From the moment Labor took office, it has pushed the US to allow Ukraine to use Western weapons more aggressively.

And Lammy also distanced himself from the US by withdrawing Britain’s objections to an International Criminal Court investigation into Israel’s political leadership, restoring funding to UNRWA in Gaza and pledging 10% of Britain’s suspend arms sales to Israel.

As a result of this balancing act — combining assertiveness on policy with physical lockstep in shuttle diplomacy — State Department officials say the pace of talks between Lammy and Blinken has increased significantly.

But the strategic problems facing Labour’s foreign policy are deep and increasingly intense. Before Lammy came to power, he presented his approach as ‘progressive realism’: a mix of Ernest Bevin and Robin Cook, he would be realistic about the fragmenting world order, yet willing to pursue the ethical dimension of foreign policy.

Lammy’s team will no doubt see last week’s efforts – supplemented by a face-to-face meeting with Donald Trump, whom he called a “misogynistic, neo-Nazi sympathizing sociopath” – as progressive realism in action. But in an age like ours, Bevin’s spirit will always prevail.

Labor’s strategic task, which Bevin formulated in the post-war period, is to get the United States to invest in the defense of Europe. This was easier to achieve when Russia was seen as the main threat. With both parties in Washington focusing on China, it is much more difficult.

Lammy’s solution was not only to tackle the problem head-on, but also to use diplomacy with Europe and the global South as a temporary solution.

Most importantly, through interventions such as the slavery speech at the UN Security Council, he tells not just the story of Britain to the world, but a story of the modern world to Britain. He is acutely aware of the political, cultural and economic energy emanating from the Global South and speaks to this on behalf of a progressive, multi-ethnic and religiously diverse Britain.

Ultimately, however, Britain remains a middle power that has inflicted enormous self-harm through Brexit: a country that, even as the world fractured into economic power blocs, chose to cut itself off from the power bloc that had spent the last few years. years of construction.

Achieving that right, through a comprehensive security treaty with the EU and restored diplomatic alignment with Europe in global affairs, is the task against which the Labor government will be judged. Despite Sikorski’s blow, Lammy will have to brace for the ruthless horse trading that will begin once the foreign ministers of certain other countries take office.