Emily Thornberry, Labour’s Shadow Foreign Secretary, responding to the
speeches by Boris Johnson and Michael Fallon at the Conservative party
conference, said:
“Today, we heard yet another
4,000-word personal manifesto from Boris Johnson, name-checking no fewer than
21 countries around the world. But two countries were conspicuous by their
absence – both in his speech and just as disgracefully in Michael Fallon’s –
Saudi Arabia and Yemen.
“Yemen is facing the world’s
greatest humanitarian crisis, being made worse every day by a conflict to which
Britain is a party in all but name, one in which thousands of civilians – many
of them children – have already been killed by British-made bombs dropped from
British-made planes.
“But about this enormous
tragedy neither the Foreign Secretary or the Defence Secretary were prepared to
say a single word today. Boris is trying to treat Yemen like one of his guilty
secrets, hoping that people will forget about it as long as it’s never discussed
in public, but that will not wash.
“It won’t wash for him to
boast of Britain’s permanent seat on the UN Security Council when the members
of that Council have now been waiting over a year for Britain to meet its
responsibilities and bring forward a draft ceasefire resolution for Yemen.
“It won’t wash for him to
boast that this country’s greatest export is British values, when the only
British exports experienced by the children of Yemen are the almost £4 billion
of arms we’ve sold to Saudi Arabia since the conflict began.
“And it won’t wash for him
to describe his disgust at the treatment of the Rohingya by
the military in Myanmar, while continuing to supply the weapons that the
Saudi military is using to inflict death and displacement on the people of
Yemen.
“Indeed, together with his
false praise for Theresa May and his false protestations of loyalty over
Brexit, it made his whole speech an exercise in hypocrisy and dishonesty. But
it will not wash.”
Follow this news feed: Labour