Shadow foreign secretary to accuse Conservatives of treating international law with cavalier disrespect
Labour will restore the UK’s tarnished global reputation by backing a global anti-corruption court and by reinstating a requirement to follow international law in the ministerial code, the shadow foreign secretary will say in a speech on Monday.
David Lammy says the measures will restore the country’s reputation for keeping its word, as well as going some way to undo the damage caused by Conservative party scandals in recent years.
In a speech to the Bingham Centre, he will say international law is “the connective tissue which binds us to other nations”, but has been treated with a cavalier disrespect by the Conservative government.
Lammy’s support for an international anti-corruption court marks him out as a frontrunner in supporting a concept first proposed by a US judge, Mark Wolf; the NGO Integrity Initiatives International and a growing list of international backers include Canada, the Netherlands, Ecuador, Moldova, and Nigeria. Wolf argues that a hole in international criminal architecture permits global oligarchs to escape the law.
The Foreign Office minister, Lord Ahmad, last week rejected the court’s establishment, claiming that a meeting in November of 40 countries in The Hague had extensively discussed and rejected the proposal, but campaigners say the meeting had not been convened to discuss the proposal, no clear majority opposition emerged, and no...
I was struck by a classic example of “Don’t believe everything you read” on the front page of the Middletown newsletter, “Middletown Today,” (September 2026 Volume 6 Edition 12). What caught my eye...