David lammy

Wednesday

Stephen Daisley

The pure cynicism of David Lammy

David Lammy says he regrets nominating Jeremy Corbyn for Labour leader. We are meant, presumably, to be impressed by this admission. Given that it was delivered at Limmud, a Jewish festival of ideas, it sounds perilously close to an expression of contrition. Lammy has every reason to be contrite given the part he played in the Corbyn catastrophe. The guilty men of the Corbyn era typically belong to one of four categories. There were the True Believers — the pensionable Bennites and millenarian millennials with righteous faith in the leader and the (never properly defined) ideology he represented.

Steerpike

David Lammy’s Labour lament

Foreign affairs is a difficult brief, demanding tact, sober judgement and discretion of the highest order. So who best to embody all these qualities than Labour's recently promoted man of the hour, David Lammy? The Shadow Foreign Secretary made his first diplomatic foray this week while appearing at this year’s Limmud festival, a Jewish event where he attempted to atone for the sins of his past.  The Talleyrand of Tottenham apologised to his audience for being one of the 35 Labour MPs to nominate Jeremy Corbyn for leader in 2015, declaring that 'If I knew what I do now, I never would have nominated him... I never believed he would become leader. That was a mistake and I am sorry for that.

Monday

James Kirkup

In praise of David Lammy, a true Englishman

David Lammy, the shadow justice secretary, has been doing his LBC radio phone-in show. If you believe LBC, he has 'schooled' a 'caller' who told him he is not English. If you listen to the exchanges in question, you’ll realise he did something much more impressive, and important than that. The clip, which is all over social media, is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ssLC4U7u9t8 The short summary is that 'Jean' tells Lammy he cannot be English because of his Afro-Caribbean heritage. Lammy, who was born in London, politely examines her arguments and disagrees. There is no shouting and no fighting – that suggestion has been added by LBC to stir up anger and get some clicks.

Thursday

Rod Liddle

In defence of Piers Morgan

The Liberal Democrat party’s foreign affairs spokesgoblin, Velma from Scooby-Doo — or ‘Layla Moran’ as she is known to close friends and family —has decided that freedom of speech on university campuses is of absolutely no consequence. Indeed, she described the government’s initiative to preserve the rights of students to hear a diverse range of opinions as ‘divisive’ and quite unnecessary, while she was appearing on one of those BBC Question Time editions that nobody watches any more. Velma presumably thoroughly approved of her own party’s subsequent decision to remove the tweeted clip of her spouting this bilge so that the public couldn’t hear it.

Sunday

Matthew Taylor

Sunday shows round-up: Raab ‘excited’ to work with Biden

Dominic Raab – ‘I'm excited' about working with President Biden On the morning after Joe Biden was declared President-elect, the Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab offered his congratulations to Mr Biden and his running mate Kamala Harris. Raab told Sophy Ridge that the Biden administration would find plenty of common ground with Boris Johnson's government: https://twitter.com/RidgeOnSunday/status/1325384057602117633?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw DR: The things that President-elect Biden wants to achieve internationally... not just security and counter-terrorism in the Middle East, but coronavirus and returning to the Paris Climate Agreement – these are all things which... we'll have a huge amount to co-operate on and I'm excited about working with the new administration.