Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe
Debate between Boris Johnson and Paul Flynn(7 years, 2 months ago)
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Boris Johnson
My hon. Friend is right to ask that question. The answer is, I am afraid, that we must simply work diligently and flat out for her release.
Paul Flynn (Newport West) (Lab)
Will the right hon. Gentleman reflect on this and the rest of his conduct as Foreign Secretary in order to realise that his brand of clownish incompetence is a joke that is no longer funny, and consider being replaced by a competent politician who will attract the respect of the world and not the ridicule that he attracts?
Boris Johnson
As I have said, I think that the best course for us all is to try to minimise the political point-scoring and concentrate on getting Nazanin home.
Korean Peninsula
Debate between Boris Johnson and Paul Flynn(7 years, 4 months ago)
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Boris Johnson
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. That was why the Prime Minister’s trip to Japan was so timely and why her interventions there were so warmly welcomed not just by our Japanese friends, but by the South Koreans and many others. As my right hon. Friend the Defence Secretary will confirm, the United Kingdom is committed to the security and stability of east Asia as much as it is to Europe.
Paul Flynn (Newport West) (Lab)
The most likely start of a nuclear war will come by accident, by technical failure or by human error. The danger of that is greatly increased as world tension multiplies. Is it not true that, while there is no equivalence in this and we should pay credit to China for keeping the lid on paranoid regimes in North Korea for 60 years, the new element has been an American President who has managed to inflame every frozen conflict that he has addressed? Should it not be right that we take a British diplomatic, experienced view of this, with cooler heads, rather than follow the example of the apprentice President?
Boris Johnson
The new element is the increasing desire of the North Korean regime illegally to test nuclear weapons and threaten its neighbours and those further afield, and the acquisition of what looks like an intercontinental ballistic missile with what could be a hydrogen bomb capability. That is the new element, which requires international co-ordination to defeat.