The newly appointed head of British diplomacy, David Lammyurged on Friday for an “immediate ceasefire” in the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza and the release of hostages held by the Palestinian Islamist movement.
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“The task now is to get to work (…) to support an immediate ceasefire and move towards the release of the hostages,” Lammy said after being appointed head of the Foreign Office by the prime minister. Keir Starmerwinner of Thursday’s British general elections.
David Lammy was appointed Foreign Secretary in the new UK government on Friday following the Labour victory in the general election held on Thursday.
Lammy, a member of parliament since 2000 and until now the party’s foreign affairs spokesman, assumes responsibility for the country’s foreign policy with challenges ahead, such as the war in Ukraine and the conflict in Middle East.
Who is David Lammy?
The new British Minister of Labour Government Foreign Affairs, David Lammyis a lawyer descended from slaves who counts among his friends the former American president Barack Obama and advocates “progressive realism” in diplomatic matters.
Lammy, 51, was appointed Foreign Office chief by Prime Minister Keir Starmer, replacing David Cameron, following Sunday’s landslide Labour victory that ended 14 years of Conservative rule.
In a recent speech, when he was already being tipped to be a future minister, the London-born politician, known for his outspokenness, made it clear that the history of his ancestors, slaves in Guyana, would influence his approach to his mandate.
“I will take very seriously the responsibility of being the first foreign minister descended from the slave trade,” he said.
In his first remarks as head of diplomacy, he urged “an immediate ceasefire” in the war between Israel and the Islamist movement Hamas in the Gaza Strip and the release of hostages held by the Palestinian Islamist movement.
The Labour Party’s foreign affairs minister for the past two years, Lammy has made more than 40 overseas visits during which he has honed a vision of diplomacy based on a model he describes as “progressive realism”.
“Taking the world as it is, not as we would like it to be,” but “believing that we can give Britain its future back while achieving things for the world,” he sums up as dogma. David Lammy.
That vision combines the pragmatic approach of Labour’s most famous foreign secretary, Ernest Bevin, with the ethical idealism of Robin Cook, also a former chancellor.
The former helped create NATO after World War II, while the latter oversaw successful interventions in Kosovo and Sierra Leone in the 1990s before leaving Tony Blair’s government following the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
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