Mr President, I speak not only as a Briton, as a Londoner, and as a foreign secretary.
But I say to the Russian representative, on his phone as I speak, that I stand here also as a Black man whose ancestors were taken in chains from Africa, at the barrel of a gun to be enslaved, whose ancestors rose up and fought in a great rebellion of the enslaved.
Imperialism: I know it when I see it. And I will call it out for what it is.
David Lammy, the U.K.’s foreign secretary
Well, his address was cringeworthy, but it’s a bit of a stretch to say that he blamed Russia for the slave trade. I think that he was simply reminding people of his heritage as rhetorical ammunition.
I think a representative of the British government using slave trade to accuse Russia of imperialism is more than “reminding people of his heritage” but I get your point.
What I wrote is still much less of a stretch than the title of the article calling Putin a slave owner based on this exchange.