Lammy opened his speech in the Locarno room by praising Ernest Bevin, Labour’s post-war foreign secretary and co-architect, with Clement Attlee, of Nato and the British nuclear deterrent.

"We've got to have this thing over here, whatever it costs," Labour's then foreign secretary Ernest Bevin reportedly said in the 1940s, and "we've got to have the bloody Union Jack on top of it".

Coal was central to the war effort. It not only kept people warm but powered industry, railways and shipping. After the loss of French and Belgian coalfields to the Allied war effort, Welsh coal was ...

“Our foreign policy had to change,” Lammy said, introducing the concept of “progressive realism” inspired by post-war Labour Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin. “Progressive realism means ...