Labour arms sales scandal goes from bad to worse!

Right, so as many commentators have been opining upon, Labour have announced an arms sale ban to Israel, except of course it isn’t much of a ban when only 8.2% of all arms export licences from the UK to Israel have actually been stopped and there is no shortage of videos right condemning that rightfully as pathetic, as a gesture, as a hopeful move to take the heat of Starmer and Co over their pro Israel positioning and hopefully placate many of their critics. I’d suggest the opposite to some extent is what they’ve achieved, it’s backfiring for going nowhere near far enough, but what I’ve not seen a lot of is people drilling into foreign secretary David Lammy’s justifications for not going further, because actually we need to scratch past the surface story of the fake arms sale ban – and it is fake, it’s not a ban, it’s a gesture - because David Lammy gave so much more away than just that, if that’s all you took away from his speech in parliament, if that’s as much as the videos you might have watched covered, then you’ve missed some crucial giveaways on the thinking of Starmer’s Labour and it’s attitude to ongoing support and arming of Israel despite everything we’ve borne witness to for the last 11 months since the night of October 7th and the insight into how Israel treats Palestinians going back even further than that.
Right, so that was a critical moment in the questioning of foreign secretary David Lammy, following his announcement yesterday in the House of Commons that the UK was going to end 30 arms export licences, out of the 350 of them we currently have with Israel. Jeremy Corbyn posed two crucial questions there and Lammy dodged them both. Corbyn first asked what difference will it make and Lammy said well, what we supply to Israel here in the UK amounts to about 1% and that Corbyn should draw his own conclusions from that. I suppose that can quite easily be extended to the rest of us then can’t it? We supply 1% and Lammy still can’t bring himself to end all of that 1% is one way of looking at this. I’ll come back to this point in a moment, but Lammy claims he’s taken on board advice he’s been given, legal advice, how about you publish that advice then Dave? You demanded David Cameron publish the legal advice he’d received, so why won’t you do that now yourself then Dave? All he’s told us is that parts for F-16 jets and parts for helicopters and drones, all stuff Lammy claims could be used in violation of international humanitarian law, have been stopped from being exported to Israel but completely undermining that, is the fact that parts for the top of the line F-35 jets that are produced here in the UK will not be banned at all. There was a story briefly going around, I presume to be unverified hence why it seems to have disappeared, that these licences that have been stopped were due to expire shortly and that perhaps that is why they were chosen to be stopped as this token gesture, certainly with the F-35 jet parts still being exported, it ends up being quite believable, but for now we can only ponder on that, and see if that does end up being verified, what exactly each of those 30 export licences were, it’d be useful to know, since we can then compare those to the face F-35 parts are still being traded and that does bring me back to that point on us only supplying 1% of all Israeli arms and not stopping even that miniscule amount. The easy thing to say on that is that it will make no difference and certainly that is what Lammy both wanted us to think watching and the conclusion he clearly wanted Jeremy Corbyn to come to, but Corbyn is an astute sort, I’m sure he likely came to the same conclusion I have, which is whatever that 1% is, clearly it must be very important for it to continue to be traded and these F-35 parts come back to the story once more, because components for these jets are produced by a group of different countries making different parts and one part that is unique to this country, which I’m sure can’t possibly be used to violate international humanitarian law are the bomb release cradles for these jets, produced in the L3 Harris factory in Brighton.
Now Reuters are reporting that these parts will still not be sold directly to Israel, but that it is not possible to suspend these parts without prejudicing the global production program. This also makes no sense! It seems to just be an excuse that we won’t send them directly to Israel but we will send them there via someone else also making F-35 parts because they might be for another country. Sorry, we just can’t stop it. Wrong. If other countries want to continue to produce these jets for other nations, tell them they can have the parts as long as they aren’t destined for Israel along the supply chain. Be leaders on this. Lead the way. Say no. Instead Labour are just too weak to be global leaders on this issue, or rather they just don’t want to be, if they did they’d ban all arms sales to Israel, all export licences, as other countries have already done. They’ve led instead. All of this is part of what is called the 1% fallacy. Oh we only supply 1% we don’t make a difference, except the rality is that 1% you produce, nobody else does, so it might only seem like a very small issue, but actually it’s a critical one and to stop would make one hell of a difference. The only example I can give here is over those F35 parts licences, because that’s as much clarity as we’ve been given, but equally, we know Lammy is continuing with 320 arms export licences and we don’t produce that many parts for F-35’s so what is that about.
Corbyn’s other question covers a matter I’ve raised before and has been virtually exclusively documented by the excellent Declassified UK and this was concerning the role of RAF Akrotiri on Cyprus, a UK airbase being used as a staging ground for the UK obviously, who amongst other things have launched attacks on the Houthis in Yemen from there to try and end their blockade of the Red Sea and attacks on shipping, to no avail, but also for US forces, many flights of whom have been tracked flying into and out of Israel, Tel Aviv, presumably carrying much of the weaponry being supplied to Israel by the US and the UK which in turn is being used against the people of Gaza as genocide and ethnic cleansing continues and continues to be enabled by states aiding and abetting them. Massive questions are left unanswered, Corbyn tried to get some, Lammy hid behind national security, the old line of not being able to comment on operational issues being used to cover this up. What operational issues though? What operations are you conducting? Is the RAF active in Israel? Well again, that has been alleged, but frankly knowing what is going on in Israel and Gaza and knowing the flights thathave been going in and out of Israel from Akrotiri, because flight plans and flight logs are a matter of public record, be they military flights or not, they have to be so as to not disturb commercial flights, its not difficult for people to draw their own conclusions as Lammy asked us to do, when the context is also provided though. The caginess of the government to admit what they are up to, well, it only adds to people’s suspicions doesn’t it?
But nothing quite screams you’re guilty of enabling genocide quite like local Cypriots organising a protest, not just for Gaza, but organising it outside the gates of RAF Akrotiri itself. They know probably better than anyone what their island is being used as a staging ground for after all.
So, so far we’ve established from Lammy’s answers to Corbyn are that this ban is not really a ban, it’s optics. That the 1% we supply to Israel by way of arms is too critical in reality to be completely ended, rather than so unimportant as to not really matter and that this Labour government, just like the last Tory government, isn’t going to say a dickie bird about the goings on in and out of RAF Akrotiri. Nothing there to raise suspicions at all is there?
A 10% ban on arms sales to Israel is in no way reassuring that we’re doing enough. Suspended Labour MP Apsana Begum put this point to David Lammy herself in another question and Lammy made mention of saying, well why would we stop selling one of our closest allies the likes of helmets or goggles? They might be one of your closest allies Dave, you’ve had enough in the way of donations from pro Israel sources after all, but plenty of British people are viscerally disgusted at the concept of them being in any way an ally, committing genocide as they are. After all, a senior foreign office diplomat resigned over this matter, Mark Smith, I wonder what he’s made of this arms sales fake ban? It’s not like Lammy listened to him before he resigned after all, Get all the details of that story, which leads up to Lammy’s speech on how seriously the foreign office took his concerns before now and I’ll hopefully catch you on the next vid. Cheers folks.