Sunday shows: Labour backs “extremely strong” sanctions against Russia

Sunday Morning

Yvette Cooper, Labour’s Shadow Home Secretary, reiterated the need for a “strong and united response” on Ukraine and “extremely strong, swift and severe” sanctions against Russia.

• On the Ukraine crisis: “We need a very strong and united response to this Russian belligerence. It is immensely serious and nobody should be naive about what Russia is up to and the scale of the troops amassing on the Ukrainian border. And that’s why I think there has to be these extremely strong, swift and severe economic sanctions, financial sanctions, looking at the energy sector.”
• On whether Labour has an interventionist foreign policy: “Even though we may have had different leader views in the past, we’ve always had a policy of supporting NATO and supporting the right kind of response.”
• On intervening in Ukraine: “We’re not saying we should step back and do nothing. We are saying that we should provide the kind of training support that Ukraine needs and also the kind of equipment Ukraine needs and be ready to provide the sort of clear economic sanctions.”
• She called for a response from the Home Office on “the so-called golden visas, Tier 1 visas” (which are given to investors, many of whom are Russian nationals) and for further financial responses.
• On Diane Abbott saying Keir Starmer is a pro-war Labour leader: “I don’t think that’s right. This is talking in terms of caricatures. I’ve said we did the wrong thing on Iraq, there weren’t WMD, but I also think in the past that there was the right response, in terms of Bosnia and the serious issues there were there.”
• On whether you are welcome in Labour if you do not support NATO: “I think that has been our policy, always. At the 2019 election, it was our policy to support NATO.”
• On Sadiq Khan forcing out Cressida Dick: “Once that confidence was lost, the Met commissioner was right to resign and I support the mayor’s decision. But what I am concerned about in all of this debate is it’s focused on one individual appointment and one police force. I think the challenges for policing are much broader than this and there needs to be Home Office-led reforms.”
• She added: “You’ve seen similar issues around Leicestershire, Sussex, Police Scotland, other forces as well.”
• On Rosie Duffield thinking of quitting Labour: “I’ve spoken to Rosie about some of the issues that she’s faced. She’s also had some abuse in her local area as well from members of her local party that I think is totally unacceptable. It’s really important that we ensure MPs, everybody, is free from abuse.”
• On why Starmer is not giving Duffield more support: “There’s been a very strong sense among women MPs that we want to support Rosie.”

Trevor Phillips on Sunday

Peter Kyle, Labour’s Shadow Northern Ireland Secretary, warned that the Good Friday Agreement is “under huge pressure at the moment” because the UK government is “playing fast and loose with its words about the protocol”.

• On Northern Ireland: “The Good Friday Agreement is under huge pressure at the moment because we have a government that doesn’t represent all of Northern Ireland. It only represents part of the politics of Northern Ireland.”
• On the DUP: “If you look at what the leader, Jeffrey Donaldson, has said, it is very, very clear… they have had a set of bargains with the Tory Party and with Boris Johnson, and every one of the promises they’ve been made by Boris Johnson has been broken. They have been lied to repeatedly.”
• Asked what Labour would do in power: “I would have cancelled that US trip and I would have been there from the very moment things became unstable… Get people round the table, figure out some of the challenges and get things onto the record.”
• On the protocol: “The government has played fast and loose with its words about the protocol. It’s clear they don’t think negotiations are going to succeed. They have no plan B in place and if they do trigger Article 16 it will have implications right the way across the whole of the UK economy.”
• He added: “There has been doublespeak from the government. There will be no doublespeak from the Labour Party and we will return to the principle of the Labour Party being the honest broker that Northern Ireland needs.”
• Asked what Labour would do in relation to the protocol: “The protocol has to evolve… The way to make the protocol evolve is to have functional relationships with the EU – at the moment they are dysfunctional.”
• On the negotiations and the Conservatives: “We all know where this is going, the problem is that it’s not acceptable to a small faction in the Tory Party that have Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister, to ransom right now – including Liz Truss, who’s playing to them because of her own leadership ambitions.”
• On the government: “The government is not acting in good faith… It has delivered a deal that it is trying to distance itself from. This is the deal Boris Johnson negotiated. This is his deal. He didn’t even read it before signing it.”
• On Sadiq Khan withdrawing his confidence from Met Police commissioner Cressida Dick: “Yes, unfortunately, it got to the point where Cressida Dick had to accept responsibility for all of the ongoing revelations and inaction with reform.”
• On Russia and a regime of sanctions against Vladimir Putin’s regime: “I have absolutely no confidence that the government are equipped to deal with this simply because, when you look at all the taxation reform that they have made to date, they’re doing so not in the interests of the British economy. They’re doing it in the interests of the people who donate money to the Tory Party.”

Discussing the situation in Ukraine, Brandon Lewis said that an “imminent incursion by Russia is entirely possible”. He said the UK hopes for a “diplomatic outcome” but warned “something a lot more tragic could occur”.

The Northern Ireland Secretary told viewers that the UK is “not in that position yet” to introduce sanctions against Putin and his regime. He also said Johnson has “got the big decisions right” and has his “absolute 100% plus loyalty”.