To the Trades Union Congress conference, where Mick Lynch is once again at the centre of political controversy. The RMT union boss took to the stage at a pro-Palestine fringe event to first berate the decisions of Foreign Secretary David Lammy before appearing to compare Israel’s treatment of Palestinians to the, um, slave trade. Good heavens…
Last week, Lammy suspended 30 of 350 arms licences to Israel – prompting ex-PM Boris Johnson to question whether the Foreign Secretary was ‘abandoning Israel’ while Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu slammed the move as ‘shameful’. The decision was branded an ‘attempt to satisfy certain wings of the Labour movement’ by shadow foreign secretary Andrew Mitchell, but it seems Lammy’s approach hasn’t exactly worked. Now strike-happy Lynch has piled in, scorning the call:
Some licences, what was it? 30 out of 150 or something of that number? This is like somebody standing up in front of you in the 1840s and saying: ‘I’m going to abolish some slavery.
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