It’s been a rough summer for Tottenham fans. The ecstasy of winning the Audi Cup in 2019 is now a fading memory. Arsenal look ominously good going into the new season. But at least one Spurs supporter is doing well, and that’s David Lammy, MP for Tottenham and Labour’s shadow foreign secretary.
I’ve always liked Lammy — he’s got a proper social conscience, and I never understood why it took Labour so long to promote him to a top post. Now he’s in a senior role, Lammy has been making his mark and last month he did something that deserves applause.
In a quietly significant move, Lammy pledged that a future Labour government would support a ban on deep sea mining in international waters — throwing the UK’s weight behind a global movement to prevent catastrophic damage to marine life.
Labour would aim to be a global leader — rather than reluctant follower — on environmental issues
As I’ve written before, foreign mining companies are clamouring to strip hundreds of thousands of miles of seabed, falsely claiming that this mining is necessary to dig up the metals and rare earths needed for electric vehicles and batteries to decarbonise the economy. In other words, these companies are arguing that we have to wreck the oceans to save the planet.
Here’s what a real environmental expert has to say about this. Sir David Attenborough has been a longtime opponent of deep sea mining, and couldn’t be more clear that it must be stopped: “The rush to mine this pristine and unexplored environment risks creating terrible impacts that cannot be reversed.”
With some way to go before the next general election, Sir Keir Starmer is rightly cautious about his party making too many concrete policy commitments. That means Lammy’s very specific pledge on deep sea mining is rare and therefore significant — and I think you can draw some interesting insights from it.
For starters, it suggests Labour is going to be as serious about protecting biodiversity as it is about climate change. This is long overdue; half of all species on earth are on course to be extinct by the end of this century, because of habitat destruction, pollution, deforestation and so on. So it’s a really positive signal that Lammy, pictured right, is giving biodiversity the attention it needs.
But beyond the environmental impact, Lammy’s commitment on deep sea mining feels meaningful in other ways too. It brings the UK into line with France, Switzerland, New Zealand and over a dozen other countries in calling for a stop to this environmentally disastrous agenda.
This suggests that a future Labour government would aim to be a global leader — rather than reluctant follower — on environmental issues, which bodes well for the UK’s international standing.
What’s more, without making a spending commitment (stopping deep sea mining costs taxpayers nothing), or affecting British industry in any way, it’s created a wedge issue with the Government, which has so far said nothing on the subject.
It has also aligned Labour with thoughtful Tories like William Hague and Chris Skidmore, who have forcefully argued against deep-sea mining — leaving the Government at risk of being out of step with mainstream political opinion.
Taking all that into account, it’s undoubtedly been a victory for Lammy. He should make the most of it. The way the season is shaping up for his beloved Tottenham Hotspur, he may not see another win for a while.
You need to know the Rules
I was in Australia recently and figured an interesting way to learn about the local culture was to volunteer to run the scoreboard for an Aussie Rules football match. I arrived at the ground before the game and asked the club manager: “So what time’s kick-off?” He glared at me before giving the withering reply: “It’s not called a kick-off, mate — it’s a bounce down.”
So straight away I’d been rumbled for knowing nothing about Aussie Rules. Things went downhill. I quickly discovered that the scoring system is more confusing than watching a David Lynch film while smashed on absinthe. Within minutes my phone started vibrating. My number had been passed round and I was getting texts from strangers, angrily telling me I was getting the score wrong. Luckily some friends turned up and took charge, or else a group of mulleted Aussie Rules fans (just look at Ryan Papenhuyzen, left, to see the fashionable style) would have kicked seven shades of Vegemite out of me. But still, at least that probably would have taught me something about Australian culture.
