Labour Insiders Question Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Thornberry’s Lord Alli Link
Of all the plum jobs in the Commons, Chair of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee (FASC) is the sweetest. It gives the incumbent a strong media platform, endless global jollies, and the chance to quiz David Lammy, which should be nothing if not entertaining…
When Emily Thornberry was brutally but hilariously binned from the incoming Labour Government, she launched a hardcore lobbying campaign to become FASC chairman. Lady Nugee ‘put the thumbscrews on’, said one Labour MP, pressuring her parliamentary colleagues to back her and help her recover from the embarrassment of not getting a front bench role. There’s a little local difficulty however, which is being talked about on the Labour benches…
Thornberry is best friends with scandal-wrecked Lord Alli. She lived on the same street as him in the 1990s, and is credited with actually introducing Alli to the party in the first place: ‘Lord Alli was encouraged to join Labour by his next-door neighbour, Emily Thornberry‘. As Guido revealed, Alli has some exotic foreign policy preferences, joining figures such as Jeremy Corbyn as one of the very few British parliamentarians to go into bat for – checks notes – Bashar al Assad. As he boasted himself in a Lords debate: “I have visited Syria on a number of occasions and held talks with President Assad on several.”
And which Shadow Foreign Secretary caused outrage in 2018 when they praised Assad’s “depth and breadth of support” which is greater “than is recognised in the west”? Only Lady Nugee herself. An eyebrow raising coincidence making Labour MPs nervous about her chairmanship…
