Morning Call: Lammy’s French offensive
The shadow foreign secretary is courting Emmanuel Macron.
Good morning. Parliament returns today after a tranche of election results over the weekend. It was a good set of elections for Labour. Tees Valley was the only mayoral election it did not win, while it took control of eight new councils. Rishi Sunak is now searching for a new narrative to keep his party in check and staunch the losses. Meanwhile, Labour is preparing for government. Thoughts below.
Then, Jonathan Rutherford reviews a book on the rise and fall of the Corbynites. And Ben expands on the local election results.
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Labour’s connections in Washington DC are well-documented. David Lammy, the shadow foreign secretary, is friends with Barack Obama and organised a meeting between the former president and Keir Starmer. Rachel Reeves has taken inspiration from the US treasury secretary Janet Yellen, while Lammy has spent time courting senior Republican figures, such as the Donald Trump cabinet hopeful JD Vance, the former national security adviser Robert O’Brien, and Matt Pottinger, Trump’s deputy national security adviser.
The party’s links in Europe are not as well-advertised – but I hear Lammy is devoting significant time to building links with French lawmakers and Emmanuel Macron’s Élysée Palace. Such connections will be essential if the party enters government. A security pact with the EU is a top priority for its first year in office. Labour has also said Britain’s illegal migration challenge will only be solved through cooperation with the Europeans. Then there’s the plan to smooth the edges of Brexit with, for instance, a veterinary agreement.
The opportunity is there: Macron has been pushing the UK to host the European Political Community conference, which the government finally announced would take place at Blenheim Palace in July. The French president told the Economist on 29 April that he wants to “deepen this partnership” with Britain.
Starmer has told his team to spend their time before the election preparing the ground to ensure they can deliver immediately if elected. To that end, Lammy has had numerous meetings with senior figures in the French political establishment. He has built a good relationship with the Macron ally and former transport minister Clément Beaune and the MP Benjamin Haddad, who in February said the UK should be key to Europe’s security in the face of a Trump victory, and has met with the former French president François Hollande.
Meanwhile his team has held multiple briefings for French MPs, MEPs and officials, and is in contact with Macron’s personal advisers as well as figures in the French foreign ministry. Lammy has also started tweeting in languages other than English, including French, in a concerted effort to reach beyond the Anglophone diplomatic world. Yesterday, the French journal Le Grand Continent published an interview with Lammy, which fleshed out his “progressive realist” foreign policy.
What’s going on here? The party recognises that the fractious relations with Europe under the Tories has left it a lot of low-hanging fruit – if only it obeys diplomatic protocol. Lammy’s trips across the Channel reflect that Labour is anxiously waiting to see whether Trump succeeds in November, which would cast uncertainty across European security. This is, ultimately, an investment in relations with the French, a gambit to heal the Brexit divides and, with it, further Britain’s interests.
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Freddie’s picks
Andrew passes his judgement on the locals: a great weekend for Labour, but there is still trouble ahead.
Israel has taken control of the Rafah crossing. The ground invasion of this populated city seems to have begun. Bruno writes on what lies ahead.
Peter discusses how cricket can be fixed. Clue: not by desperately pursuing profit.
Tom McTague enters the world of the Labour chief Morgan McSweeney (UnHerd).
How the Corbynite left hit self-destruct
This is a story about four left-wing Labour politicians – John McDonnell, Jeremy Corbyn, Ken Livingstone and Diane Abbott – and how they carried forward the cultural revolution of 1968. Inspired and guided by the older Tony Benn, the fifth “searcher” of the title, they single-mindedly enlivened a moribund London Labour politics and transformed the political culture of the capital as it emerged from its postwar decline. In their comradely, disputatious and occasionally angry relationships with one another they shared a political heritage in Benn’s democratic socialism.
In 1981 his bid for the deputy leadership had bitterly divided the Labour Party. He narrowly lost and, unforgiven, suffered the political death of internal exile. A similar fate of banishment awaited three of those he inspired. In 2015, when Corbyn won the leadership of the Labour Party, they took their London politics of economic radicalism and social liberalism on to the national stage. Like all stories of hope and human desire, it ended in tragedy.
Andy Beckett has written a sympathetic and absorbing political history of the main actors of the hard-left Socialist Campaign Group. McDonnell is the intense and thoughtful one, the strategist whom Beckett describes as influenced by the Italian communist theorist Antonio Gramsci. McDonnell will prove to be the most adept in the tactical pursuit of power. Corbyn is the believer who likes people. He wants them to like him, and generally when they meet him they do. Some will come to revere him. Livingstone is the great political talent, and like Corbyn a political obsessive. His cheeky-chappy patter disguises his dark political arts. Abbott stands a little apart and slightly aloof, more guarded in public. She has had to force a trail through racism, insults and ignorance to become the first black female Labour MP. They have all had a tough fight to make their way in Labour politics, but Abbott has had the hardest. It never got easier.
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