“Logic, international law, appeals to humanity, insults, pleas and petitions have all been tried, but all words have failed. Labour has lost its ‘sense of sin’, it has lost its moral compass – the difference between right and wrong.”
Hugh Lanning, Labour & Palestine, looks at what Starmer’s first year in office has meant for Palestine and at UK Government complicity in Israel’s war crimes in Gaza.
With Labour’s failure to call for a ceasefire early in October 2023 before it became irrelevant, expectations of Labour in government on Palestine were incredibly low if not non-existent. But even their most fervent critics would have found it difficult to believe – one year on, just how low they could sink.
This Starmer-led UK government is not Labour in spirit or practice, it is certainly not socialist. In its policies and actions. On Palestine, it can only be described as a genuinely reactionary and conservative government. Its complicity in Israel’s war crimes is not only because it knows of the wrong being done, but also because it is actively involved in perpetrating those crimes. Notwithstanding David Lammy’s statements, we continue to allow British-manufactured military parts to be bought or supplied to Israel for them to use in their illegal war of occupation. It is not as if there is any doubt as to how the weapons are going to be used – there are ‘reasonable grounds’ of suspicion being shown on the television every night.
Not content with this, we are an active participant in the military alliance against the Palestinian people. We provide military and security intelligence, we provide naval and military support, we allow trade and finance to directly bolster the Israeli regime and its colonisation by settlement of Palestinian land, we allow its war criminals to wander free, providing training to police and military.
Logic, international law, appeals to humanity, insults, pleas and petitions have all been tried, but all words have failed. Labour has lost its ‘sense of sin’, it has lost its moral compass – the difference between right and wrong.
Not being religious, I still regard “thou shalt not kill” as a pretty strong moral imperative. It is the basis of most civilised frameworks of law and ethics. It is hard to imagine a clearer cut ‘sin’ than the planned, deliberate decision to use the starvation of tens of thousands of innocent women and children as a weapon of war to obtain Palestinian land and deliver military objectives. Now, as a direct consequence, ever more Palestinians are daily being callously shot down in their desperate seeking of food and water.
Even this falls on deaf ears, Labour fails to call out, not even supporting the UN’s careful use of the words, the genocide and apartheid colonisation that has now been globally recognised for what it is. With George Orwell turning in his grave, rather than denouncing the perpetrators of the crimes, it has turned its firepower on those who have the nerve to challenge this ‘hear no evil, see no evil’ narrative. Israel, it seems, can in reality do no wrong that would cause the UK Government to take any meaningful ‘concrete action’ as it is required to do under international law. Trump’s might is stronger than any words of law could be
Instead, they spout evil at all their critics. Widening the legislation to make it easy to ban protests, supporting ridiculous police constraints on demonstrations that are no threat to any section of the public. At the shameless behest of the Israeli government they sought to ban ‘Kneecap’ from Glastonbury using the BBC to redact any images or words they disapprove of.
The recent rebellion of MPs on disability benefits has shown that the only thing the closed elite circle running Labour will listen to is the possible loss of power and control. It is shaming to Labour Party members that many more Labour MPs are not challenging this Government’s policies on Palestine. Regional Offices are actively being used to silence debate at constituency level. Leaving the space for friends of Israel, hostile to any form of Palestinian self-determination, to set the media narrative, despite clear public support for sanctions and meaningful action in response to Israel’s attritional war on Gaza.
Israel has lost global public opinion and any moral authority it once had to lecture the world. It has lost support not just amongst the young people, the Global South – but also of a growing number of Jewish people. Labour has already lost the support and confidence of millions of voters. It will not win these people back, it is not accidental that ‘anti-Keir’ chants are de rigueur at Glastonbury and on the huge ongoing protests – the largest post-war movement seen in this country. Labour has successfully turned itself into the enemy.
After a year, what chance of it getting re-elected? Little or none unless there is a major shift of tone, policy and actions on Palestine. It cannot silence or imprison all its opponents; millions more voters will carry these memories of Labour’s abandonment of civilised values into the ballot box. And it is not that Palestine is a one-off, it is a belief system that underpins so many of their actions – it is the victims that are to blame. They need to remember that victims can still vote. The majority support Palestine, they support action when words fail to help its resistance to genocide and occupation – they are not terrorists, they are not the sinners.
- Over the next period, Labour Outlook is running a series of daily articles, reviewing one year of the Starmer Government across different key areas.
- Hugh Lanning is an officer of Labour and Palestine, former Chair of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign and former Deputy General Secretary of the Public and Commercial Services Union.
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Sometimes people may have to abandon conventional morals but not in this case as Hugh Lanning details