After Diane’s brain fade on PoliticsLive, Joe Biden joined her last night in mixing Ukraine up with another country. During his State of the Union address overnight the President vowed that Putin will never “gain the hearts and souls of the Iranian people”. Watch Kamala mouth the correction behind him…
Some interesting geography from Diane on Politics Live this lunchtime as she came out with the foreign policy analysis:
“Abbott: one of the things that Putin has got wrong: he seemed to think that his tanks could roll in to Croatia
Coburn: You mean Ukraine?
Abbott: … into Ukraine…”
Other than that she sounded altogether less medicated than usual…
TrotsApp’s deafening silence over Putin’s invasion last night hasn’t gone unnoticed, not least by those who happen to sit on Labour’s own frontbench. Shadow Defence Secretary John Healey this morning slammed Diane Abbott for her usual criticism of ‘NATO expansion’, and essentially blamed Abbott for falling for Russian propaganda. Abbott was the Shadow Home Secretary just two years ago…
Speaking to LBC’s Nick Ferrari, Healey said Abbott was
“…An entirely marginal voice. NATO is a defensive alliance, the aggression comes from Putin, we’ve seen that with 180,000 troops on Ukraine’s borders. And to fall for that is to fall for the Russian propaganda. The disinformation rather than the diplomacy that Putin has been pursuing in the last few months.”
When reminded of Abbott’s previous title, Healey simply said “indeed, and that’s changed. Keir Starmer is in charge now, Jeremy Corbyn is not a Labour MP…”. Diane is still happily in possession of the Labour whip, though.
Diane Abbott obviously didn’t get the memo that her party’s support of NATO is “unwavering“. Last night, having already claimed the Ukraine crisis is the result of NATO’s “eastward expansion” – nothing to do with the 100,000 Russian troops on the border, obviously – Diane doubled down on her foreign policy counsel. This time seeming to imply Ukraine could be “peacefully separated” like the Czech and Slovak Republics:
“In this complex mix, the US has decided that it is necessary to send US and other NATO troops to Russia’s borders. As I have said elsewhere, this alone should tell us that the claims that Russia is the aggressor here should be treated very sceptically. The destabilisation of the entire region comes from the continued eastward expansion of NATO.
Instead, we need to find peaceful solutions to a complicated conflict of identities and national rights. This was done elsewhere in Eastern Europe as countries peacefully separated. The Czech and Slovak Republics managed it rather well.”
Of course what this would mean in practice is handing chunks of eastern Ukraine over to Russia. Putin would hardly believe his luck. What was it Sir Keir said last week? “Today’s Labour party* has [a] clear-eyed view of the current regime in the Kremlin”. *Terms and conditions apply.
Right on cue, Labour MP Diane Abbott and Independent MP Jeremy Corbyn have come out parroting Kremlin press releases about the Ukraine crisis. Both appeared on a ‘Stop the War’ panel last night to offer their pearls of wisdom on diplomacy and peace, with Abbott kicking off the event by blaming the West for increasing tensions, and claiming Russia shouldn’t even be treated as the aggressor. Спасибо comrade…
“We see that the United States has decided that it needs to send US and other NATO troops to Russia’s borders. This alone should tell us that the claims that Russia is the aggressor should be treated sceptically. The destabilisation in the entire region comes from the continued eastward expansion of NATO.”
The continued eastward expansion of NATO to Russia’s borders? Guido would love to know where Diane picked up this piece of intelligence. The last time Guido checked, Estonia and Latvia joined NATO two decades ago…
Following Diane’s expert lesson in geopolitics, it was time for Russian-hat lover Jezza to give it a go. Bring on the usual “both sides” routine…
“…We then have lethal weapons being shipped into the Ukraine… all building up on both sides. It is incredibly dangerous, and it is the US, with British support, that is leading the way on this. There has to be peace.”
“There are people in the Ukraine who would like to join NATO, there are people in the Ukraine who would not like to join NATO. Personally I think the build-up of a military presence on the borders of NATO to Russia is something that will only encourage the development and increasing presence of troops on the other side of the border.”
Guido didn’t hear the name “Putin” once during either speech. Perhaps he missed it. Labour can wash their hands of Corbyn, as Starmer indeed spent all of yesterday attempting to do. Diane, on the other hand, remains perfectly comfortable on the Labour backbenches…
SW1 will be crestfallen to hear Claudia Webbe is being kicked off the Foreign Affairs select committee, before she’d even had one chance to ask Liz Truss any questions about ‘Be’rus’. The news, confirmed in today’s Order Paper, is hardly surprising; even ignoring her recent harassment conviction, figures out last month showed her to have the worst attendance of any FCO committee member, turning up to just 18 out of 39 meetings. Is there no legal action Tom Tugendhat can take for her shirking of duties?
Meanwhile Diane Abbott is set to join the Justice Committee after Tory MPs’ plan to install her as chair of the Home Affairs Committee failed. Thankfully she’ll be able to draw on her familial experience of the justice system…
UPDATE: Skwawkbox points out that Webbe joined the Foreign Affairs Committee in May 2020, several months after other members. Figures for the 2021-2022 session reveal that “much-disliked Labour right-winger Neil Coyle“, who joined the Committee at the same time as Webbe, is in fact its most truant member. Coyle has attended just 7 of the 18 meetings, while Webbe has put in the legwork and showed up to 12. This is despite Coyle not having to take time off to appear in Court as a defendant. Guido is more than happy to correct the record, and thanks Skwawkbox for their help.
