Responding to Emily Thornberry’s praise for the Cuban regime, Orlando Gutiérrez-Boronat, spokesman for the Cuban Democratic Directorate says:

“For a future Attorney General of the United Kingdom to be praising a murderous, dictatorial regime is horrifying. Ordinary Cubans are oppressed by the Castro authorities with little hope for a better life. Thousands of Cubans are routinely imprisoned and tortured as ‘enemies of the state’.

The Cuba regime has sent 5,000 men to fight with Putin in his imperialist invasion of Ukraine. If Emily Thornberry is a glimpse of what is to come under a Labour UK Government, it is deeply worrying. I urge Sir Keir Starmer to clarify whether Emily Thornberry’s support for the murderous Communist Cuba regime is the official Labour Party position.”

In a Labour government the Attorney General will be Emily Thornberry. In power she would be the government’s chief legal adviser – dealing with questions of international law, human rights and more, as well as superintending the main independent prosecuting departments. It might be worth knowing what her views are on other countries’ models for justice in that case…

Talking to Andrew Marr, Thornberry managed to admit that murderous communist Cuban dictator Fidel Castro was a “divisive figure”, before heading into a praise-filled diatribe for the regime:

“I went to to Cuba in the early 1990s when there was a great economic difficulties in that country and I found a country that was egalitarian with a fantastic health service… in my view it was a brave island that stood against a regime that for 50 years would not trade with it and would not let other countries trade with it too.”

The health service wasn’t fantastic enough to prevent two million Cubans escaping to get to the freedom of the American “regime”. Nor to save the 6,800 Cubans killed by firing squad and extrajudicial assassination. Maybe Thornberry paid a visit before the USSR’s full funding of the dictatorship ended and food shortages became the norm. Thornberry ploughed on when Marr tried to mention the regime’s “machine gunning people in boats including children when they’re trying to leave“:

“To give more doctors to fight the Ebola crisis than the Americans and that little tiny country could do that… they also exported their values across South South America and into Africa producing doctors and nurses… it was an enormous achievement for a little Caribbean island.”

Those exported doctors are, of course, actually slaves of the state, which is paid for its “missions” and treats doctors as prisoners while its own health service crumbles. Starmer is proposing to have as the Crown’s chief legal adviser an admirer of a totalitarian state which imprisons and tortures opponents, prevents free expression, bans independent trade unions, discriminates against LGBT people and only allows communists to serve in parliament…

Starmer has written to Labour’s PPCs ahead of St. George’s day tomorrow instructing them to mark the occasion “with enthusiasm” and to “fly the flag”. If they’ve already got in a tizzy over the Union Flag on leaflets how will they cope with this…


Fresh polling on Sunday carried out by Lord Ashcroft reveals that one in eight 2019 Labour voters say that the St George Cross is racist. Only 56% of 2019 Labour voters agree that the flag is “a symbol to represent England and no one should be offended by it” – that’s compared to 9/10 Tory voters. A substantial 13% (along with 8% of LibDems) said the symbol is “racist and divisive and should not be displayed”. Guido can think of one Labour figure who has been valiantly raising these concerns for years…

Climate activists from Just Stop Oil hijacked Shadow Attorney General Emily Thornberry’s discussion on fraud with the Institute for Government. Not even ten minutes in to Emily taking the stage, orange confetti along with accusations of hypocrisy showered the Labour MP. Meanwhile, Lord Walney is saying environmentalist could become violent terrorists…

Just seconds after claiming Labour’s “enormous discipline” means its spending commitments “have all been costed“, Shadow Attorney General Emily Thornberry forgot what her party’s tax policies actually are. Appearing on Politics Live this afternoon alongside Tory MP Kevin Hollinrake, Thornberry insisted Labour “don’t make an announcement without being able to show where the money comes from” – only to then admit she “can’t remember” where they’ll find £22 billion for small businesses…

Thornberry: “The idea is that we redistribute taxation from the larger businesses to the smaller businesses, so what we’re going to do, we’re going to stick with the taxes for the larger companies…”

Hollinrake: “Which taxes?”

Thornberry: “… I can’t remember exactly which ones it is now. I think it’s the highest… higher business taxes, and so businesses of a certain size will continue to be able to pay that higher amount, and that money will be transferred to smaller businesses…”

She then claimed Hollinrake “really needed to pay more attention“. Apparently Labour are committing to higher businesses taxes now. Does Rachel Reeves know about this, or does she need to pay more attention as well?

Ever since Labour decided to pretend Rishi Sunak doesn’t think child rapists should be prosecuted, Sir Keir’s own record heading the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) is back under the microscope. By his own words, this should be fair game: when his team “made mistakes“, Keir “carried the can“. There is at least one member of his own Shadow Cabinet who’s been particularly outspoken on those “mistakes”…

In 2010, Emily Thornberry stood up in the Commons to tear chunks out of the Starmer-led CPS for failing to come to a conclusion on prosecuting the officer who killed Ian Tomlinson at the G20:

“We have all seen the film. The man was clearly assaulted […] How can the CPS have taken 15 months to come to no conclusion? It is not going to take any action. I suggest that that would not have happened if the tables had been turned and this shows that there is no equality before the law.”

Then, in recently unearthed footage from Question Time in 2012, Thornberry again goes after the CPS for “letting down” the victims of Jimmy Savile after failing to act on the evidence. When the Savile drama hit the headlines again last year, Starmer called it “an untrue slur” – yet here’s Thornberry:

“I’m really disappointed in the Crown Prosecution Services for letting down these victims. When evidence comes forward, I’m really shocked that they did not go ahead with prosecuting. It’s for that reason that I wrote in my capacity as Shadow Attorney General to [the] Inspector of the Crown Prosecution Service […] and asked for an independent inspection.”

She also slammed the CPS for investigating itself over the the issue, claiming it was “a bit like the BBC doing an investigation of itself, or the health service doing an investigation of itself, or Broadmoor doing an investigation of itself.” Co-conspirators will recall Thornberry even wrote to Starmer personally, attacking the Service for “backsliding” on “weakened” rape prosecution guidelines.

If Labour are going to continue presenting Starmer as an infallible man of great integrity, they need a better strategy than simply sending out Wes Streeting to defend his boss’s “proud record” as though it is beyond reproach. A record so strong that you can still read Emily Thornberry’s speeches laying into it on her own website. Thornberry now sits a few chairs along from Starmer at the Shadow Cabinet table…