Mick Hartley

Steerpike at the Spectator on the latest David Lammy blunder:

It’s a gaffe a day with David Lammy. Now the Foreign Secretary has come under fire after he hailed Azerbaijan for being able to ‘liberate’ territory – in an ongoing conflict widely viewed as an ethnic cleansing operation – in a recent Substack post. Lammy took to his blog to express his unsolicited musings about the Nagorno-Karabakh region, writing:

"The states of Central Asia look increasingly east and south. Azerbaijan has been able to liberate territory it lost in the early 1990s. Georgia and Moldova are engaging with Nato and [the] EU."

Crikey. Talk about bad wording, eh? Mr S would remind readers that Azerbaijan has been locked in an ethnic and territorial conflict with Armenia over the Nagorno-Karabakh region – with concern growing after violence restarted in the region last year. Harrowing clips of Armenian civilians being beheaded have spread online, exposing the extent of the violence being carried out by Azerbaijani forces – making the Foreign Secretary’s choice of language all the more baffling.

Now a prestigious professor has urged the Labour man to retract his comments, blasting them as ‘shockingly callous and ignorant’. Mark Movsesion fumed:

"Exactly a year ago, Baku ethnically cleansed the region of its 120,000 Christian Armenian inhabitants in violation of an order from the International Court of Justice. Lammy seems to think Azerbaijan, like Ukraine, is trying to free itself from Russian domination. In fact, Azerbaijan and Russia are strategic partners, and Azerbaijan carried out the ethnic cleansing of Karabakh with Russian acquiescence."

Meanwhile shadow foreign minister Alicia Kearns has called for the Foreign Secretary to clarify what he meant in his ‘vanity blog’, adding:

"Words matter as Foreign Secretary, especially when opining on conflict.‬ Contradicting long standing UK policy in a vanity blog is totally inappropriate and throws into question the Foreign Secretary’s judgement. David Lammy needs to urgently clarify the Government’s policy on Nagorno-Karabakh. This is a serious matter – over 100,000 people have been displaced from their homes.‬"

The man is way out of his depth. The first Labour minister to go? We'll see, but I wouldn't bet on it: he's well versed in playing the race card.