Three degrees of deliberate dishonesty from Margaret Hodge

By Azernews

By Orkhan Amashov

Politics, even when practiced in the British Parliament, an exalted forum for elated deliberations, is not always an arena for noble causes; on occasion, it could be a place for low skulduggery. When Margaret Hodge, a Labour MP for Barking, asked Foreign Secretary Liz Truss if the UK was considering to impose sanctions in relation to Azerbaijan, which she claimed to be complicit with and supportive of Putin’s latest misbegotten endeavours, we witnessed the latter.

There is no need to go on a diatribe against the Labour parliamentarian and that is definitely not the intention of this piece. The lady in question is not a friend of Azerbaijan, she is under no obligation to be one, and Azerbaijan does not need a friend like her. But when someone in a parliament of an important world capital suggests, at a time when the global political climate is cliché-electric and too much is at stake, that sanctions are to be imposed on a country which has nothing to do with the troublesome state of affairs, an answer must ensue and be propounded as forcefully as possible.

Her mentioning of Azerbaijan was not an act of doing politics, but a quintessential example of politicking. Baku, fully and unwaveringly supportive of Ukraine’s territorial integrity, has sent humanitarian aid, provided free petrol, offered to mediate the talks, and behaved as a decent friend in need. The Azerbaijani public has been supportive of Ukraine, by gathering in front of the Ukrainian embassy in Baku. President Zelensky and the Ukrainian Ambassador in Baku expressed their gratitude and acknowledged Azerbaijan’s moral backing. In the UK, the Azerbaijani community has been collecting funds for the Ukrainian Red Cross. These are all the cold facts, which evidently were not integral to the delusional thinking of the Labour MP.

It is not just that Lady Hodge has got her facts wrong. It was not the case of an honest mistake. By implicating Azerbaijan in supporting Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, she has snatched at a chance to cast aspersions on the legitimacy of Baku’s international standing, thereby engaging in deliberate dishonesty. This was a calculated move, and from the very first second the word “Azerbaijan” came out of her mouth, her sinister intention was more than a foregone conclusion for those who had been privy to this woman’s view of Azerbaijan from 2017 onwards.

On a different note, if there is one country in the South Caucasus that could be considered to be in Putin’s camp over Ukraine, and that would be Armenia, in relation to which Mrs Hodge proposes no sanction. Within the current geopolitical situation, Armenia, in view of its membership in the Kremlin-dominated Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO) and Eurasian Economic Community (EEC), and its conspicuously deteriorated relations with Kyiv, is firmly in the Moscovite orbit.

Furthermore, there is mounting evidence that Yerevan is already taking some practical measures to help Moscow evade sanctions by hosting Russian companies, and, in some ways, becoming a loophole for them. The logic of the Western punitive measures lies in inflicting such a degree of pain on the Kremlin that will be economically debilitating and cause Russia to succumb to pressure. If the intention here is to find out, rightly or wrongly, the states whose steps could potentially be regarded as “propping up the Kremlin”, then Lady Hodge had better look at a different direction.

Having been engulfed by numerous letters and emails on the subject, the Labour MP was compelled to produce an answer, which was a typical example of “political evasiveness”, as she made a reference to the 2017 debate as to the alleged money-laundering allegations, which have nothing to do with the Ukrainian invasion and are indicative of her own bias.

The official British line, thankfully, is dismissive of Hodge’s insinuations. HE James Sharp, the British Ambassador to Azerbaijan, stated on Twitter that there is no reason to sanction Azerbaijan, and there no plans to do so, as Baku has not supported Russia. Foreign Secretary Liz Truss could have made the same fact abundantly clear whilst directly replying to the Labour MP. Her answer did not refer to Azerbaijan, and one may assume this was an indirect denunciation of Lady Hodge’s claim, yet there is no doubt it could have benefited from factual crispiness.

Lady Hodge probably will never be able to sweep away the skulduggery-induced detritus of her murky past. It is also highly improbable that she will openly acknowledge her mistake and issue an unreserved apology. From her initial Twitter reply, it is only too clear she has chosen the path of stonewalling. No sophistry or elegant equivocation will help her. She may not be important on her own, but the malaise, the symptoms of which she has displayed, is not to be taken lightly.