John McDonnell: Boris Johnson has 'embarrassed' Britain over Russia sanctions
The shadow chancellor claims the Foreign Secretary's failure to get the G7 summit to back new Russia sanctions has damaged the UK.
Wednesday 12 April 2017 14:58, UK
Boris Johnson has embarrassed Britain on the world stage over his mishandling of possible sanctions against Russia, John McDonnell has told Paste BN.
The shadow chancellor claimed the Foreign Secretary's failure to get the G7 summit to back new sanctions had damaged the UK's credibility.
"The idea of going along to the G7 and threatening to try and put together a coalition around sanctions was never going to succeed," Mr McDonnell said.
"It was a really bad policy decision by Mr Johnson. It should never have happened," he added.
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"It is a pity that Mr Johnson made such a poor judgement in this matter."
Mr McDonnell said that "to have these one day on and off policies from Boris Johnson every time he thinks up a new idea undermines our credibility in the future".
He added that the Foreign Secretary "never really thinks it through, and then embarrasses our whole country in the international scene".
But a source close to the Foreign Secretary hit back at Mr McDonnell's comments, saying: "Maybe he should try and convince his party and leader - who took a trip to shake hands with Assad - to join others (trying) to do something to end the bloodshed in Syria instead of trying to score points."
The two-day meeting of G7 foreign ministers had aimed at hammering out a unified approach to Syria before Mr Tillerson headed to Moscow.
Mr Johnson denied he had suffered a defeat, saying there was support for sanctions if further evidence of the chemical attack were gathered.
When asked if the government had been humiliated, the Chancellor responded without referencing Mr Johnson.
Philip Hammond said: "The British Government position has been and will remain to lead the way on arguing for a robust approach towards Russian aggression in Syria.
"We've been doing it for years and will go on doing it, and we have to make that case and we will continue making that case.
"Sometimes some of our partners are less forward-leaning that we are but that won't stop us making the case for what we believe is the right approach to dealing with Russia."
Damian Green, the Work and Pensions Secretary, also defended the government's actions.
"The fact (is) that the G7 now said that Russia has a choice," he said.
"Russia can either work with the rest of the world or it can continue to back this terrible regime that's doing unspeakable things to its people in Syria."
The intervention came after Tory former foreign secretary Sir Malcolm Rifkind suggested the US-UK position on sanctions had made US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson's meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov more difficult.
"I always was a bit suspicious about its wisdom because there has to be some doubt about whether further sanctions would make any impact given that they were going to be targeted against individuals and unlikely to change the Kremlin's view," Sir Malcolm told the BBC.
"But also what we have now got is a worse situation than we started off with because Tillerson will now be told by the Russians, when he sees Lavrov 'well, you don't even have the G7 supporting you'."
Former UK ambassador to Washington Sir Christopher Meyer said of the Foreign Secretary: "All we can say is he got himself out on a limb and the branch was cut off in Lucca, Italy at the G7 meeting."