The Labour MP for Tottenham could have been a good politician. He could have represented his constituents faithfully, done good things for his area and contributed in a positive manner to British politics. Unfortunately he’s going to be permanently tarnished by his support for Jeremy Corbyn.
It doesn’t matter that Lammy has made a sort of apology for his support for Corbyn. Such an apology is not good enough. This is because it was Lammy amongst others who supported Corbyn for the leadership of the Labour Party. Lammy did this despite Corbyn’s long record of political extremism, support for Irish Republican and Islamic terror groups and Corbyn’s willingness to sit down and make nice with the sort of people who promote medieval blood libels against Jews.
There’s a brilliant piece in the Spectator by Stephen Daisley about Lammy’s about turn on Corbyn and it’s well worth reading in full. He said that Lammy could have been a bright Labour moderate of the Blairite sort but he decided to throw in his lot with the Corbynite cranks. Mr Daisley compared negatively Lammy and Richard Burgon the Leeds East MP. He said that pro-Corbyn stuff was somewhat expected and accepted from the likes of Burgon,a man described by Mr Daisley as a someone for whom ‘managing to spell his own name on the nominating form was no small feat.’ However Lammy is different. Lammy is not stupid. Lammy, Mr Daisley said, is a cynic who supported Corbyn for base political reasons.
Mr Daisley said:
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. There were the Fellow Travellers — the spineless soft-leftists (but I repeat myself) who knew the man was bad news yet were the loudest voices in the chorus of ‘Oh Jeremy Corbyn’ the minute it looked like he might not be a total electoral duffer. Then there were the Concerned of Twitter — mostly Blairite types who thought this whole antisemitism business was ghastly but not ghastly enough to do much more than post ‘solidarity’ tweets and pen the occasional op-ed in the Observer.
Lammy belongs to the fourth and easily the thickest category: the Broadeners. These were the chumps who gave Corbyn their nomination in 2015 not because they wanted him to win but because they were sure he wouldn’t and wished merely to ‘broaden the debate’. They broadened it, all right. Perhaps Lammy was on manoeuvres, trying to curry some favour with the left. Perhaps he is just another Labour sentimentalist swayed by the myth that the far-left are excitable but well-intentioned social democrats rather than the enemies of social democracy they in fact are. Not that it matters. Lammy helped Corbyn become leader and would struggle to qualify even for ‘Concerned of Twitter’ status. Indeed, if anything affronted him about the 1,666 most infamous days of Labour’s history it was Corbyn’s neutrality on Brexit
Mr Daisley then went on to say that there should be no future role in the Labour Party for Corbyn or his acolytes. But he also said that this sanction should also apply to those like Lammy who played a major role in getting Corbyn elected as leader of the Labour Party. Mr Daisley is correct. Without the likes of Lammy and other similar cynics who put their hands up for Corbyn knowing what a scumbag he is then Labour would not have ended up being led by Corbyn and therefore being wrecked as a party of thoughtful opposition.
“Lammy is not stupid”: au contraire. I give you his Mastermind appearance.
https://youtu.be/DsR4Nx-ELgc
Agree with the rest though, and would add his race-grifting as guilt in the deliberate poisoning of social harmony.
Lammy is stupid, but also just bright enough to be ” a cynic, a humbug, an operator” (to quote Daisley) to which I’d add he’s an race-baiting opportunist.
Do you remember the “Lammy Report” in which the evidence did not support his pre-determined conclusions (As the Spectator’s Brenden O’Neill showed)?
The irony here is that this (evidence being shoe-horned into pre-determined conclusions) is the very definition of “prejudice”, the very thing the Lammy report accused the criminal justice system of being.
Oh, and also as Daisley said “He’s anything but naive”, he knows he is onto a winner (constituency wise) by his antics.
I remember the Lammy Report and it did whiff very strongly of ‘policy based evidence making’
Sorry to be weird about this, but where is the evidence that Lammy supports or ever supported the Labour Left? Sure he was one of the MPs who nominated Corbyn in the leadership elections, but that might just have been in the interests of representing differeing opinions and it took everyone by surprise that Corbyn won?
First of all Happy New Year to you and everyone on here. You are not being ‘weird’ it’s correct that Lammy has been a Blairite moderate mostly but there are allegations that Lammy supported Corbyn in order to cynically buy favour with the Labour Left. The author of that piece that I linked to takes issue with all the ‘broadeners’ who allowed the Corbynites to gain power.
*differing opinions
I suggest the British public are well on their way to saying “a plague on all your house” to all our present woefully inadequate politicians. It’s now very hard to think of more than one or two with any credibility.
I don’t quite understand what you guys are saying. Should we abandon democratic voting and just keep the Tory party in power as Labour are scumbags, even a moderate like David Lammy? Welcome to the new Fascist Britain, or not, hmm hmm………
The problem is however bad the Tories are Labour are worse. We have a form of elective dictatorship because Labour are so damned bad. Personally I’d like to see a third party, a proper centre right one come to the fore as on many issues there’s not much to choose from between the Tories Labour or Lib Dems when it comes to major issues such as immigration, culture and energy. Quite frankly I’d like to see Labour get back to what they are supposed to be and act as representatives of the British working classes and not be the metro left disaster that they are at present. A Labour party that defended the borders, protected the culture and which was in favour of a sensible energy policy would be one that I might be able to vote for. The trouble is that this is not what the Labour party is at present.