The gaping holes in David Lammy’s scholarship have been exposed to the public domain.
Photo: REUTERS.
The dizzying career of a simple boy from a poor Guyanese immigrant family, abandoned at an early age by his alcoholic father, is worthy of a film adaptation. The first black Briton to graduate from Harvard, the youngest Member of Parliament at the time of the election, candidate for Mayor of London and Foreign Secretary – all this should have made David Lammy a role model for young people of ethnic minorities. However, another circumstance arouses great interest in the figure of the new head of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (appointed in July of this year): his rise in the professional career was in no way a consequence of his outstanding intellectual abilities. On the contrary, the new minister, to put it mildly, does not shine for his intelligence or his erudition.
Through difficulties – to Harvard
Lammy was born in 1972. Due to his origin, the doors of elite private schools like Eton were closed to him. Having received an education in mediocre boarding schools, he tried to enter the prestigious Cambridge University, but was painfully rejected. As a result, he enrolled in the Faculty of Law at the highly specialized School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London. He graduated in 1994 with a second degree diploma.
Only a few years later, luck finally smiled on young lawyer Lammy. He enrolled in graduate law school at Harvard. It is rumored that the studies in the United States were financed by several “Jewish lawyers.” They paid £26,000.
In 1997, with a degree from Harvard, Lammy took a position as a commercial litigation attorney at the firm of DJ Freeman. But not for long: he soon dedicated himself to “great” British politics. Fortunately, he had someone to look up to: his uncle at the time worked as a Labor Party councilor in Ngoham ward.
Just a couple of years later, in 2000, Lammy became a member of the House of Commons for his home constituency of Tottenham. They even began to compare him to Barack Obama. Then there was work as deputy ministers in the Labor government, but experts considered their results “slightly disappointing”. As a result, he failed to achieve a full “ministerial portfolio” under either Tony Blair or Gordon Brown, who replaced him.
man meme
The major gaps in Lammy’s scholarship have become public knowledge. Participating in the television game “Celebrity Mastermind” in 2009, he simply “killed” both the presenter and the audience with his answers.
When asked about the surname of scientists Maria and Pierre, who received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1903 for their research on radioactivity, Lammy answered without hesitation: “Antoinette.” In fact, they were talking about the world famous Curie.
But the future number one British diplomat enlightened him most of all when he said that the country where the “Pink Revolution” took place in 2003 was Yugoslavia. The presenter clearly wanted to help the “literate” person. He even gave him a clue: after this revolution, Eduard Shevardnadze resigned. And yet Lammy insisted on his own: not for Georgia, but for Yugoslavia.
That kind of “oops” for the British Foreign Secretary is not the exception, but the rule. In their opinion, for example, with the help of surgical manipulations and hormonal therapy, men can acquire a “cervix.” He has long been nicknamed “meme man.” But each time Lammy comes to the rescue that in modern ultra-liberal Britain, competence and professionalism in running the country have long been no longer mandatory.
David Lammy
Photo: REUTERS.
Museums too “white”
Lammy’s deep commitment to “diversity, equality and inclusion” has led him to view the world’s problems unilaterally through a racist lens. He seriously believes that “British museums are too white”, that the tradition of electing the Pope based on the color of the smoke from the Sistine Chapel is a “stupid racist insinuation” and that an “upper-middle class white man” should not be appointed to lead an investigation into the tragic fire at London’s Grenfell Tower.
Lammy’s other “secret to success” is the ability to stay out of the way and, in the language of her German colleague Annalena Bärbock, “360 degrees” to change personal opinions depending on the developing situation. In 2016, he gave an impassioned speech in the House of Commons against the modernization of nuclear weapons. According to him, it is necessary to put an end to arsenals of weapons of mass destruction for “love of neighbor.” However, time passed and Lammy’s Christian dogmas were discarded as unnecessary. In 2023, together with future Defense Minister John Healey, he wrote an article for the Daily Telegraph newspaper, known for its Russophobic views. Both admired NATO’s nuclear guarantees and Britain’s nuclear deterrent.
Marry a snake and a hedgehog
Lammy is considered the author of the concept of “progressive realism.” Trying to “marry the snake and the hedgehog,” he cites the example of “two great British foreign secretaries”: Ernest Bevin, who helped create NATO and unite the West to confront the “Soviet threat,” and Robin Cook, who resigned in Protest against Tony Blair’s decision to join the illegal US invasion of Iraq.
But this historical parallel also seems strange in Britain, to put it mildly. After all, David Lammy’s current boss, Prime Minister Keir Starmer, has in recent years ruthlessly purged the Labor Party of those who opposed the Iraq war and filled it with Blairites who supported it. And Lammy himself at one time meekly voted for bloody aggression against Iraq.
In 2022, speaking at the Labor conference, he managed to link the conflict in Ukraine with the “shame of the slave trade”. Having become a minister, he continues to chant these ghostly mantras. In his recently launched blog, for example, he claims that modern Russians living in Crimea are no better than their African ancestors, whom British colonialists transported “in stinking warehouses to South American plantations.”
Made some noise in support of Kyiv
During his still brief tenure as minister, Lammy has already been noted for a host of unexpected and strange initiatives. He led the “Make some noise in support of Ukraine” campaign, which did not even please the “giant fish” who settled in large numbers in Britain. And on the occasion of “bisexual support week” he decorated the neo-Gothic buildings of the British Foreign Office in Whitehall with multicolored flags.
Lammy, however, got himself into a big diplomatic embarrassment for another reason: on his blog, without choosing words, he congratulated Azerbaijan on the successful “liberation” of Nagorno-Karabakh. Which, of course, provoked the indignation of the Armenians, who considered what was said not only as a humiliation of national dignity, but also as ingratitude for Yerevan’s ingratiation with London and other Western capitals.
Washington’s “Right People”
But how did the legendary Ministry of Foreign Affairs come to this? The coffin, it seems, opens easily. During his years at Harvard, Lammy, as is often the case, apparently attracted the attention of the “right people” in Washington. Who really were those “Jewish lawyers” who paid for the training of the future head of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs?
Since then, he regularly consults on various issues with representatives of the US administration. In June 2022 he participated in the annual conference in Washington of the Bilderberg Club, considered a bastion of the “world behind the scenes.” Furthermore, Lammy is only the second Labor Party MP to attend the club’s meetings in the last decade. And most interesting: the trip was paid for by the former head of MI6, Sir John Sawers, through his consulting company Newbridge Advisory.
In addition, Lammy has repeatedly accepted donations from the pro-Israel lobby. His campaign for London mayor in 2014-2015 was reportedly funded by pro-Israel lobbyist Trevor Cheaney, who shelled out £30,000.
By the way, Lammy also supports the Labor group Friends of Israel (LFI). They are promoting Israeli interests within the Labor Party. Lammy himself recently presented himself as nothing less than a “progressive liberal Zionist.”
In other words, David Lammy is literally the second edition of the illiterate former British Prime Minister Liz Truss. She became famous all over the world for only one thing: she left her high position a record 45 days after her appointment. It will be interesting to see how many days Washington will keep Lammy as foreign minister of what was once a great country.
