Post-cold war era ‘well and truly over’, warns David Lammy
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Foreign secretary says keeping the British people safe means standing up to Russia. The post-cold war era is “well and truly over” and keeping the British people safe means standing up to Russia, the UK foreign secretary, David Lammy, has warned. Writing in the Guardian before a meeting likely to be focused on Ukraine between the UK prime minister, Keir Starmer, and the French president, Emmanuel Macron, in Downing Street, Lammy insists “keeping the British people safe means standing up to the Kremlin. Working with our friends and allies to deter Putin’s mafia state.”.
He also says facing down the new geopolitical threats will require a revamped Foreign Office that accepts that the distinctions between international and domestic policy have become more blurred than ever before. In a statement of this intent, Lammy announced the Foreign Office will introduce the first standalone sanctions regime in the world directed at freezing the UK assets of people smugglers and organised crime entities.
A range of other measures designed to hit people smugglers have already been announced, but this is the first time the highly developed UK sanctions regime, already repurposed to seize the assets of kleptocrats, will be expanded to hit people smugglers and those that enable them in the UK.
Lammy claims a realistic strategy to reduce the flow of migrants – which now eats into about a third of the UK’s overseas aid budget – “involves transactional, hard-headed diplomacy with partners all along the international people-smuggling pathway”.
