You ignored the main point of Iain Dale’s posting which I read earlier this morning – that it is wrong for a government minister to comment on Foreign Affairs without clearance from the FCO.

Such unthinking blog posts by a government minister on a matter of State could cause considerable damage to the UK’s overseas relations if misinterpreted by local media.

I say that for government’s of all sides – Labour and Tory.

Part of the reason he’s the ‘top Tory blogger’ is that people pay attention to him and link him. Give him no attention and he’ll go away.

I don’t buy that argument, because Lammy’s main concern is how little attention is being paid to their cause.

These people are British citizens. Should ministers avoid make a comment on their protests just because it might be misconstrued by foreign governments?

Lammy is a bit of a shill, but he is right to draw attention to this matter. The only coverage has been about the protests, with almost nothing about the violence IN Sri Lanka itself. And the protest was organised entirely by text messages and no doubt some social networking too – a victory for the new politics. Shame the cops had to smash it up again. There were babies in that crowd, but I guess Our Nation’s Finest don’t mind killing them too.

Lammy seems like he wants to prove he has more substance than he’s perhaps been known for in the past. A good thing if you ask me.

Dale doubts he had FCO clearance but that’s unsubstantiated; how he can go from an unsubstantiated claim to asserting this is yet more evidence of a government falling apart I’m not sure…

The bottom line is this David Lammy is going to be the next Mayor of London, and that prospect terrifies the Tories

Isn’t there this little thing called an election he has to pass before that happens?

Lammy isn’t a cabinet minister. He is Minister of State in the department of innovations universities and skills, with repsonsibility for higher education. The cabinet minister from that department is John Denham.

Sorry to be pedantic.

Ah, my mistake. I’ve rectified that…

What about the Sinhalese? We are only hearing the arguments from the Tamil side. For the first ten years of the Tamils campaign, The Sinhalese suffered many acts of violence from the Tamil Tigers; in part because of their poorly trained armed forces. Tamils outside of Sri Lanka have been funding acts of violence in Sri Lanka for 25 years. The Tamil Tigers are led by people who believe in using violence to obtain their demands.

Well Iain must be off the mark going by the fact that Lammy has linked to his OK piece on his twitter feed: http://twitter.com/DavidLammyMP/status/1484647559

What’s that you say, David T?

QUOTE: “David Lammy is going to be the next Mayor of London, and that prospect terrifies the Tories” UNQUOTE

Please God, can’t Labour do any better than Lammy? He’s yet another super lightweight, politics is full of them now. He also isn’t very good in his work, a sign of this is the fact he keeps getting moved on; a sign someone is a high flyer being groomed for high office or an embarrassment/liability.

I’m with Sunny on this one. I’m no fan of Lammy, but he should feel free to speak on this topic and I totally agree that the issue and the protests were largely and unreasonably ignored by the media. Maybe middle class white protesters make better headlines than dark skinned protesters from a minority from a small island off a continent few care about. Who knows?

Dale is a party supporter and he’ll act more and more like one the closer to the election we get.

David Lammy should be congratulated for a post which shows genuine feeling for the sufferings of the Tamil people.

Labour London Assembly member Murad Qureshi has blogged about the Tamil protests too: http://tinyurl.com/c6rdkb

David Miliband needs to put some serious pressure on the Sri Lankan government to call a ceasefire.