British columnist and author Allison Pearson slammed Foreign Secretary David Lammy’s announcement on Monday that the UK is immediately suspending 30 out of 350 arms licenses due to “the risk that the arms will be used in serious violations of international humanitarian law” as a politically-tainted move that is a “bold challenge to the limits of satire.” Call me soppy and nostalgic, but I preferred it when Labour was controlled by the trade unions not the Gaza Party. At least the wily leaders of Aslef and the NUM merely wanted improved wages and conditions. They did not expect to dictate British foreign policy. Unbelievably – although maybe all too believably, given this fledgling Government’s ability to do the most awful thing in any given situation – David Lammy announced that the UK was suspending some arms export licences to Israel. It would have been a controversial decision in normal times, but it came immediately after one of the most anguished days in Israel’s history. Six young hostages, who had been in a living hell in the tunnels under Gaza for 11 months, were executed with a bullet to the back of the head by their Hamas captors. But not before that genocidal group had recorded each hostage in order to have a gloating video to release on the day their parents buried them. To hear Lammy say he was suspending 30 of 350 arms export licences because there was a risk such equipment “might be used to commit serious violations of international humanitarian law,” presented a bold challenge to the limits of satire. The only group which could possibly benefit from such a pause had literally just committed the most grievous possible violation of international humanitarian law: the mass murder of innocent civilians. Unfortunately, the Muslim vote is far too valuable for Labour to allow foreign policy to get in the way of preserving it. Throwing our Israeli allies under the bus while they face an existential threat on all sides was clearly considered a small price to pay if it could appease sectarian extremists here in the UK who pose a demographic challenge in Labour strongholds. As if to confirm our worst suspicions, Lammy’s announcement came on the very same day that four new MPs, elected on a pro-Gaza ticket, and a former Labour leader, informed the Speaker they were founding a group known as the Independent Alliance that would sit together in the Commons – Jeremy Corbyn, long-time Hamas sympathiser; Ayoub Khan, MP for Birmingham Perry Bar; Adnan Hussain, MP for Blackburn; Shockat Adam, MP for Leicester South; and Iqbal Mohamed, MP for Dewsbury and Batley (where a teacher went into hiding with his family in fear of their lives after an angry Muslim mob objected to an RE lesson on blasphemy in which he showed a picture of the Prophet Mohammed). Nothing to worry about, ladies and gentlemen. Just an Islamic separatist caucus now sitting in our Parliament with the aim of influencing government policy towards views which are inimical to our values and traditions. (Can you get arrested for mentioning British “values and traditions”? Asking for 30 million non-brainwashed people.) The UK actually provides less than one per cent of Israel’s armaments. So the cut Lammy announced was only ever crude gesture politics. The man is […]