UK sanctions: a seismic victory for the solidarity movement, but Burnham could easily turn out to be Starmer Mark II
9 September 2026
UK foreign secretary Ed Miliband has placed a ban on the UK’s trade dealings with West Bank settlers and any goods they produce. The UK will also impose targeted sanctions on any British organisations and individuals who support, finance or advertise settlement activities in the Palestinian territories. The move is rooted in the ICJ’s belated 2024 ruling that Israel’s occupation of the West Bank along with East Jerusalem and Gaza is entirely unlawful.
The development is welcome. Eleven other countries—Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Iceland, Ireland, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Spain and Sweden—are introducing or supporting the introduction of national or European restrictions on trade in goods with settlements. This is the kind of joined up action that might just build to a complete arms and trade embargo on Israel—one that matches the sanctions applied to South Africa during the height of the apartheid era. Europe and the UK can assert massive influence over Israel through sanctions. If the US joins in then it’s all over.
The solidarity campaign deserves huge credit here. It has placed relentless pressure on the UK government since Israel began its genocide in the slipstream of 7/10. After the callous indifference and naked obstruction of the Sunak and Starmer governments, Burnham has moved out of necessity, not conviction. Everyone knows that Starmer’s complicity with Israel’s genocide caused him and the Labour Party massive damage. It’s also well understood that Burnham has been a compliant supporter of Israel for years and has packed his cabinet with members of Labour Friends of Israel. Maybe Burnham thought he could get away with this, but since becoming leader Labour has enjoyed a 5% bounce and is now flatlining at 25%—not enough to establish a lead over Reform and way off the already dismal 33% Starmer won at the last election. Burnham had to do something about Israel. He wins no prizes for grace or technique.
Even if Burnham remains untrustworthy, Francesca Albanese—the UN’s leading authority on Israel’s genocide in Gaza and illegal, apartheid occupation of East Jerusalem and the West Bank—has responded to Miliband’s speech enthusiastically saying it amounts to the “strongest condemnation ever issued by the UK government on Israeli occupation” and a “seismic shift” in UK policy. The foreign secretary’s references to “ethnic cleansing” and “settler terrorist” mark a departure from his predecessors. Miliband also delivered “an official position on the illegality of the Israeli occupation as a whole and ethnic cleansing.” This is a more developed position that the one previous stated by UK leaders. Whereas previous governments condemned the establishment of settlements, Miliband said that the entire military occupation was unlawful. “This is huge,” Francesca added.
Francesca was more positive than seemed likely in the run-up to the announcement. Last week she argued that the sanctions would only be meaningful if they were part of a “true paradigm shift”. The ban had to extend beyond products to include services, weapons and spying information. The UK also had to support South Africa’s submission to the ICJ and even the Nicaraguan case against Germany. If these changes weren’t introduced, she argued, the measures would “over time come to be seen as not amounting to a reckoning, but a press release. Still, these were moves the UK would need to make as it clamped down further on Israel’s rogue behaviour—something that was never going to happen all at once.
I was happy to hear Francesca be more upbeat than I expected and cheerier than I was feeling myself after I listened to Miliband’s speech live. After discovering that the West Bank trade ban will probably only affect roughly £38 million of the £6 billion trade the UK and Israel conduct each year I wondered if it would make a difference to Israel’s economic viability. But I like being upbeat, too, and hope spurs us on. What happened yesterday marks a step forward. As Francesca noted on X, the UK’s new position stands as a “much-needed beginning, even if it does not yet reverse all policies undermining Palestinian self-determination.” She added: “May the UK government and people hold firm. The pressure will be fierce.”
This is the point. Israel has responded ferociously and threateningly. The UK Jewish-Zionist establishment has condemned Burnham’s baby steps in extremely hostile terms. “This is truly a dark day for British Jews,” the chief rabbi Sir Ephraim Mirvis intoned on X. “Today our Government has chosen to ignore the deep concerns expressed by so many of us. The measures announced amount to little more than political flag bearing for mendacious anti-Israel rhetoric and those who harbour a dangerous obsession with the Jewish State. These measures will succeed only in bolstering the very extremism they seek to target.”
The establishment Zionist message is clear. Even in the face of Israel’s systematically-evidenced ethnic cleansing and genocide of the Palestinians, under no circumstances should the UK respond to Israel’s conduct in any way whatsoever. Not even a tip-toe reference to ethnic cleansing and the introduction of the most timid policy initiative any government could take are acceptable. Israel must be allowed to do whatever it wants. It’s the only country on the planet that shouldn’t face consequences for actions that can only ever be understood to be a response to antisemitism. Antisemitism is everywhere—even under your bed—just look and you’ll see. Any criticism of Israel only stokes even more antisemitism. The only thing that matters is Jewish suffering.
This is the oldest theatrical script in town, a psychopathic melodrama led by Israel and its diehard supporters that’s been running since at least 1967 and is scheduled to run for ever, even though audiences are dwindling. Forty percent of Jews who live outside of Israel have denounced Israel’s genocide of the Palestinians, but for the show’s producers—Israeli politicians (they all repeat the same lines) and figures like Mirvis—these Jews don’t exist. Either Netanyahu doesn’t understand or more probably don’t care that, far from combatting antisemitism, their chronically myopic approach can only increase antipathy towards Jews because it associates being Jewish with genocide denialism. It’s one of many reasons why I and millions of other Jews worldwide are standing up and saying “not in our name”. We have to be clear that being Jewish doesn’t entail obscuring, apologising for or actively supporting a genocide.
So Francesca was right, the backlash is upon us. Clearly now is not the time for us to go for a cup of tea to celebrate the “victory” of a limited sanctions policy that won’t be rolled out for six to nine months. Now is the time for us to increase our focus and resolve, because Burnham is spineless and surrounded by people who support Israel, and Miliband revealed himself to be well-intentioned but ultimately weak when he led the Labour Party between 2010-15. Meanwhile Israel is ramping up the genocide in Gaza and the ethnic cleansing of East Jerusalem and the West Bank.
Before I get into the detail of Miliband’s speech and discuss whether it amounts to a UK policy reset, here are some dates for the diary. On Saturday 26 September the solidarity movement will gather at St. George’s Plateau in Liverpool, right by Lime Street station, at 12:00 noon. We’ll march to the Labour Party conference to demand that the UK stops arming Israel. I’ve booked my ticket and am psyched. Then on 10 October there will be a national demonstration in London, gathering at the usual time.
Miliband’s painful prologue
Miliband’s speech in the House of Commons didn’t instil confidence. He opened not with a critique of Israel’s genocide of the Palestinians or its violent annexation of the West Bank, but instead a eulogy to Israel. He paid tribute to the role the state played when it gave his grandmother a home after she’d lost most of her family to the Nazis. He spoke about the joy of picking oranges on the kibbutz where his cousins lived. Then he argued it was morally wrong for anyone to question Israel’s inalienable right to exist and he’d call them out.
The content could have come straight out of a Jewish National Fund propaganda video—only it was the UK foreign secretary repeating the mythology of Israeli salvation, the dream of a socialist movement that flourished on stolen land, and the endlessly repeated lie that the existence of an apartheid state that announced its own establishment in breach of UN conditions must never be questioned. I felt my will to live drain out of me.
Next Miliband rolled out a bite-sized, colonialist, entirely ahistorical account of 7 October. It sounded like he’d only read what Israel and the complicit western mainstream media have said about the events of that day—and maybe that’s all he had read. He obediently rolled out the Zionist mantra that everything revolves around the existential, perennial threat the Palestinians pose to Israeli Jews. Only Israel could guarantee Jewish survival in the face of antisemitism. He couldn’t bring himself to mention Israel’s takeover of Palestine from its indigenous people: the ethnic cleansing and mass killings of the Nakba, the brutal occupation established in 1967, and the confinement of the Palestinians of Gaza to the largest open-air concentration camp in the world from 2007 onwards.
Jumping through yet more hoops, Miliband rolled out bare-faced lies about Iran constituting a threat to Jews across the world, for which there is zero evidence. That doesn’t mean that Iran has never attacked a Jewish person—just that there’s no credible evidence linking the state to an attack, including the ambulance attacks that took place in London earlier this year. Before pointing fingers Miliband might have also dwelt on the million Iraq civilians the UK helped murder in its 2003 invasion. Jewish Iranians enjoyed protected status and rights in Iran and swear loyalty to their history in the country, which predates the Jewish presence in historic Palestine, etc.
What kind of cognitive dissonance did Miliband have to shut out as he portrayed Iran as a threat to Israeli Jews given that Israel has twice launched unprovoked attacks on Iran, killing thousands of Iranian civilians in the process? Does Miliband really have to behave like just another lying politician? Can’t he dredge up the better person who co-habits his body with a Zionist automaton?
Miliband had finally prepared the ground for a policy announcement—not sanctions on Israel but Hezbollah’s financing arm, Al-Qard al-Hassan. Then he promised another pro-Israel intervention: he was going to report Iran to the UN Security Council “for its nuclear violations alongside our allies”. Miliband finally explained the point of these measures—the “shared national security interests we have with Israel”. A speech that was supposed to focus on the sanctioning of genocidal Israel devoted its opening ten minutes to showering praise on the Zionist state and introducing measures that were explicitly in its interests.
But are the Iranian violations supposed to have been carried out after the US tore up the nuclear agreement with Iran, after which there was nothing left to violate? Did they take place after the US and Israel then launched unprovoked attacks against Iran’s nuclear sites in June 2025? And after the US and Iran assassinated Ayatollah Khameini, who’d issued a fatwa against nuclear weapons? Seriously, Ed?
Having dealt with Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran Miliband finally turned to the question of… the rise of antisemitism in the UK. What else? Starmer had already devoted more time to this theme than (i) any other policy area and (ii) more than any UK leader in living memory, including Thatcher and Blair. Starmer’s close friend and Attorney General Richard Hermer also made an unusual number of public statements, many of them on the subject of antisemitism. In general terms, ever since Jeremy Corbyn ran to become Labour leader in 2015 establishment politicians and the corporate media have spent more time discussing antisemitism than the racism experienced by any other minority in the UK—even though the threat routinely takes the form of criticising Israel’s actions, not Jewish people. In 2026 alone Starmer promised more than £300 million to the Jewish community to enhance their protection. That same year he promised £40 million to the Muslim community, which is 13 times larger than the Jewish community. They did this even though it’s far easier for a racist to identify a Muslim than a Jew, unless the Jew is ultra-orthodox, with ultra-orthodox Jews accounting for about 25% of the UK’s 270,00-300,000 Jewish population.
From the outside it can easily look as though the mainstream Jewish community is receiving preferential treatment—how else are people who are not Jewish (and I write this as a Jew) supposed to perceive the extra attention and money it receives from the government? Yet Miliband felt it was necessary to make Starmer’s robot-like points all over again. He can only have believed that all of this kowtowing was necessary if he wanted to raise any kind of objection to Israel’s behaviour.
When Miliband finally mustered the courage to talk about what’s been happening in Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem he spoke in a language that has become painfully familiar. Instead of introducing an active pronoun into his sentences—one that might begin “Israel has killed/bombed/seized/occupied/demolished/blocked” etc—he talked about “what has unfolded in Palestine…” or alluded to “houses bulldozed, roads and public infrastructure destroyed, families displaced from their homes” or referenced “Palestinian communities completely expelled since 2023” or observed how “two teenagers were shot” again and again and again. It was as if he’d ed how to described the genocide and the occupation from BBC and Guardian editors who specialise in this form of linguistic complicity—as detailed in Adam Johnson’s new book, “How to Sell a Genocide”. It was bemusing, embarrassing, preposterous, really.
Along the way Miliband reiterated why the UK government still cannot assess if Israel has perpetrated a genocide because it needs to wait for a “competent court” to make a ruling. This procrastinatory approach has long been the way the UK approaches the matter, but the approach itself is in clear breach of the 1947 Genocide Convention, which requires governments to reach a decision as soon as they’re able so they can ensure they do everything they can to prevent an apparent genocide from proceeding. This is a duty. Waiting for a court to take years to reach a decision—especially when, like the ICJ and ICC, it’s obstructed—defeats the purpose.
Genocide scholars have concluded that the UK nearly always violates its duty to prevent genocides. Meanwhile many other countries make their own assessments about the likelihood that a genocide is taking place without introducing obstructionist tactics. In the case of Israel, these countries have been able to reference the thousands of pages of evidence and argument that have been generated by the UN, human rights organisations, aid agencies, genocide scholars, human rights lawyers, medical experts, children’s rights groups, environmental bodies, etc. It’s genuinely distressing to see how people who look like they might be potentially decent human beings—including Miliband—acquiesce to sheer inhumanity of the imperialist protocols that continue to govern the foreign office and Westminster.
UK sanctions and Israeli sanctimony
Finally Miliband got around to the question of Israel’s conduct. He quoted Ehud Olmert saying that “what is happening” (still no pronoun) amounts to “a violent and criminal effort to ethnically cleanse territories in the West Bank.” He cited the former minister of health and retired brigadier general from the IDF Ephraim Sneh, who said that (again no pronoun) “This is ethnic cleansing pure.” The pronouns magically reappeared when Miliband referenced opinions forwarded not by Israelis but by the UN and the British government on the same question. The framing remained coy. “The British government agrees that there is ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in areas of the West Bank,” Miliband argued. He could have been more forceful but still went much further than Starmer.
Miliband also delivered the key content of his speech: the sanctions announcement. The UK government would sanction companies and individuals who provide services including construction, infrastructure, financing and real estate for settlement expansion. He alluded to but didn’t name the “Great Israeli Real Estate Event” that took place at Edgware United Synagogue in north London on 14 June, which marketed properties in numerous illegal settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. “We must and we will ensure this never happens again,” he declared, finding his stride. “So we will ban the advertising in the UK of illegal settlements.” He made it clear that the UK would sanction “extremist settlers who have supported or incited acts of violence against Palestinian communities.” He also announced that he would deter settlement expansion, including the development of the highly controversial E1 settlement project, which, if introduced, will sever East Jerusalem from the West Bank and cut the territory in two.
The inevitable relapse arrived when Miliband specified that the UK government was targeting the settlers, not Israel. He argued that this was because the government supported a two state solution—as if Israel’s occupation of East Jerusalem, Gaza and the West Bank could continue without the existence of Israel 1948. Worse, Miliband leapt to the conclusion that the government’s support for two states required him to “wholeheartedly oppose the boycott divestment sanctions or BDS campaign.” This makes no sense at all. BDS’s primary goal is to end Israel’s occupation of East Jerusalem, Gaza and the West Bank, and support the law of return. It doesn’t specifically oppose two states. Even if it did, BDS has led the way when it comes to sanctioning Israel’s illegal occupation. Everyone who wants to rein in Israel’s behaviour can see this. Instead Miliband plagiarised some BDS ideas and then set about delegitimising it. How low can you go?
A little more promisingly, Miliband also announced that the UK government will “refuse all license applications for arms and other exports that materially contribute to the occupation.” This seems to imply that existing weapons contracts will be allowed to continue but no new ones will be issued. Is it a good thing that no new contracts will be issued? Yes. If existing weapons contracts continue does this ultimately mean that Miliband along with Burnham will be complicit in Israel’s genocide? Yes.
This position captures the inherent tension that permeates the UK government’s new position. The introduction of sanctions, the acknowledgement that the occupation is illegal and the recognition that Israel has engaged in some ethnic cleansing amounts to progress. Nevertheless Burnham’s government remains committed to sending military weapons to Israel that will enable it to continue to perpetrate its genocide. It’s supporting the continuation of trade with Israel 1948 that will enable the Zionist state’s economy to continue to fund the genocide and maintain if not extend the occupation. Also, what’s the point of the UK clamping down on businesses based in the West Bank and East Jerusalem if it won’t sanction the Israel 1948 organisations that maintain the occupation and seek to extend it? What’s to stop UK companies that want to trade with the West Bank from connecting with entities located in Israel 1948 and using them as a stepping stone?
Many other questions remain unresolved. The UK government has effectively recognised the ICJ ruling on the occupied territories of 2024 yet 2,000 UK citizens serve in the IDF and many will go on duty in the occupied territories—which is illegal and needs to be ended. The UK government has also yet to make a declaration on the status of the spying missions the Starmer government oversaw and what should happen to the potentially thousands of hours of footage collected by the UK—some of which can be used to prosecute war criminals. Nor has the UK government shown any inclination to revoke the Starmer-Cooper-Hermer proscription of Palestine Action, which Trump has now promised, meaning the Labour government is responsible for severe restrictions now being place on free speech in the west. And what about defence secretary Wes Streeting, who sent texts to the ex-UK ambassador to Washington and Jeffrey Epstein ally Peter Mandelson stating that Israel has committed war crimes and sanctions should be applied to the state itself—what are Miliband and Burnham planning to do with this information?
The list of awkward questions is long enough to have raised the possibility that Israel could have been reasonably relieved that Miliband’s proposals didn’t go a whole lot further. Israel could have read the sanctions move as an economically insignificant gesture intended to appease people who are advocating for Palestinian justice without challenging Israel’s basic ability to continue to ethnically cleanse and kill Palestinians at will. Given that Israel’s popularity in the west has plummeted, a round of concerned but ineffective posturing should have suited its government just fine.
But instead Israel has gone ballistic. Foreign Minister Gideon Saar responded by saying that Miliband’s “accusation” amounted to “outrageous lies”. He added that Israel would close Britain’s consulate in occupied East Jerusalem—which represents the UK to the Palestinians. He also insisted that the UK would no longer be able to participate in the US-led coordination mission for Gaza, that British training of Palestinian Authority forces in the West Bank would be terminated, and that twelve UK officials—eleven of them MPs—would be banned from entering Israel because they were “involved in antisemitic and anti-Israel activity, as well as those who deny the very existence of the State of Israel.” The list includes some familiar faces, including Jeremy Corbyn, Zarah Sultana, Naz Shah, Diane Abbott and John McDonnell. Weirdly it didn’t include Burnham, Miliband—or Benedict Cumberbatch, Brian Eno, Paloma Faith, Kneecap, Michael Rosen, Juliet Stevenson, Tilda Swinton, Bob Vylan and Roger Waters.
Saar argued that because Israel faced a hostile Labour government it had no choice but to respond. “I say to the Labour Government and to every government in the world that thinks it can force Israel to act against our national and security interests: You have no chance of succeeding,” he declared. “We did not return to our land after 2,000 years only to lose it under pressure from jihadists, Islamists, antisemites, far-leftists and wokes. Not only will you fail to harm us. You will harm yourselves and your own influence.”
I quite like this statement. It makes it clear. Israel is the most powerful country in the world and it will eliminate anyone who attempts to stand in its way. To everyone who likes to get all upset when anyone evokes the idea of Zionist power—insisting it plays into the antisemitic trope of Jewish power and the world Jewish conspiracy—how about you write a letter of complaint to Saar?
Other Israeli leaders also stepped in, including Yair Lapid—leader of the self-styled “centrist” Yesh Atid party, which recently merged with Naftali Bennett to form Together to strengthen the opposition bloc—who has criticised the government for its aggressive response but also claimed that the sanctions are “wrong”, “dangerous” and a “grave mistake”. He argued the sanctions would strengthen extremist voices in Israel and would embolden Hamas. Surely, though, if Lapid opposed the occupation as well as the genocide he would support the introduction of mild sanctions as a device to speed along a solution. But Yair Lapid’s position doesn’t fundamentally differ from Netanyahu’s.
The response of the US Ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, was even more confrontational. “The Brits have lost it,” he commented before Miliband stood before the Commons. “The Jew hate of their government knows no boundaries and knows no facts.” Seems like he didn’t know that Miliband is Jewish (although he might have figured he’s a self-hating Jew) and that there’s never been a government that includes more ministers who are members of Labour Friends of Israel, or that Starmer handed more than £300 million to the Jewish community. Israeli president Isaac Herzog also stepped in, warning that sanctions would turn out to be “a grave miscalculation, a decision that will fall on the wrong side of history.”
Chief Rabbi Mirvis had more to say than I had space to post above. “On the eve of Rosh Hashanah and at a time when our community is more vulnerable than ever to the wave of extremism that has been building over recent years, these sanctions do nothing to advance the cause of peace,” he added in typically hyperbolic style. “Nor do they make anyone safer–quite the contrary.” He concluded: “Gesture politics of this kind feeds into an increasingly hostile discourse about Israel, and the cumulative effect of such punitive policies is to further embolden those, at home and abroad, who use hatred as a weapon against Jews.”
This is pure, manipulative nonsense. Even if antisemitism should always be confronted, Mirvis has been at the heart of a movement that has repeatedly conflated criticism of Israel with antisemitism. He played a pivotal role in seeking to destabilise a political party—the Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn—with smears that turned out to be almost entirely unfounded just to make sure the UK didn’t elect a prime minister who, unlike Mirvis, would be committed to “peace”. The influential pioneer of the creative health movement, to my mind a Gabor Maté figure, Rebecca Gordon-Nesbitt has devoted 450 meticulously-researched, pages to the destabilisation campaign that Mirvis contributed in the recently published “KIlling Corbynism: Zionism’s War on Socialism”. Mirivis’s argument that Miliband is feeding hostility towards Israel and is therefore responsible for rising antisemitism is preposterous. Israel is transparently the source of people’s hostility towards Israel. Israel is brutalising the Palestinians in the West Bank and geocoding the Palestinians in Gaza. To deflect from this is hypocritical, irresponsible and dangerous.
The schism is interesting as well as deeply disturbing. How is Israel going to row back from this? Support for the Zionist state started to tank years before Miliband made his statement. The UK happens to be one of its most important allies. Successive UK governments have gone to extraordinary lengths to prop up Israel, largely against the wishes of public opinion. But an out-of-control, nakedly fascistic Israel that’s convinced of its own superiority and behaves in a definitionally self-righteous way is entering into a game of chicken with its allies. It fancies this approach more than thinking about going about its genocide and annexation just a little more quietly. All of a sudden it feels like the endgame has moved a lot closer—just because of the prospect of having to deal with sanctions worth £38 million.
Meanwhile, what might Israel be up to? Banning 12 people from entering the country is neither here nor there. But what was Saar referring to when he told the UK government “you have no chance of succeeding” and added that “you will harm yourselves and your own influence”?
We know that Israel has assassinated moderate negotiator in order to derail talks, beginning with Count Folke Bernadotte, the UN’s first mediator in Palestine, in 1948. Israel has launched numerous false flag attacks over the years, including the sinking of the USS Liberty, which killed 34 sailors, during the Six Day War. It murdered or injured about 3,000 people by distributing booby-trapped pagers in Lebanon in September 2024. In 2025, Israel targeted Hamas political leaders in Doha while they were discussing a US ceasefire proposal. It has embarked on an extended effort to bring about regime change in Iran, infiltrating the country with Mossad operatives. Senior US officials reported that they feared Israel intended to assassinate foreign minister Abbas Araghchi and parliamentary speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf during negotiations to end the war on Iran. Many people believe that Israel has information from the Epstein files that enables it to control Trump and could extend to any number of US politicians.
More generally and perhaps more worrying, Israel possess advanced surveillance capabilities that are rooted in Unit 8200, the country’s signals, intelligence and warfare agency. It’s the largest single unit in the IDF and provides 80-90% of all intelligence. It has exported surveillance and intelligence systems to countries around the world, including Pegasus spyware, which can infect systems without a click, allowing governments to spy on whomever they like. There is concern that Israel, through NSO Group—an Israeli surveillance technology company that has strong ties to Israel’s elite military intelligence and created Pegasus—controls the entire deployment process. This provides Israel with potentially huge disruptive power should it ever want to harm an ally who has become an opponent.
Policy reset?
In the run-up to Miliband’s statement there was some talk that the new sanctions policy would amount to the most significant change in the UK’s approach to Israel since Starmer’s foreign secretary David Lammy suspended 30 weapons contracts with Israel back in September 2024. Miliband referred to Lammy’s move as an important stepping stone in his speech. However Lammy’s suspension was never more than a smoke-and-mirrors cover-up for the UK’s ongoing, intensifying arms trade with Israel. It’s interesting to revisit this moment and to track what came after, just to raise the possibility that even if the sanctions policy is promising it would easily be a cover for the UK government to maintain the status quo rather than pursue meaningful change.
The Lammy move goes back to the moment when Starmer, recently installed as the prime minister of the UK, made three quick moves that for a short while gave the impression that he just might assume a more progressive position on Palestine than the Conservative government he replaced. Starmer reinstated UNRWA. His government also muttered that if Netanyahu visited the UK he might be arrested in line with the ICC warrant. Thirdly Lammy announced that 30 weapons contracts with Israel would be suspended. However it didn’t take long for the government’s position on the ICC arrest warrant to dissolve, for other Israeli leaders and military figures to be invited to the UK, and for the hapless Lammy’s weapons contracts policy to fall apart.
To begin with, the 30 contracts that Lammy suspended amounted to a fraction of the total 250 arms agreements that UK weapons companies had struck with Israel. Lammy claimed that the suspension covered all contracts that featured weapons that Israel could use offensively, meaning that the remaining 220 couldn’t be linked to its genocide of the Palestinians, but ultimately all weaponry contributes to a country’s war effort and therefore offensive capacity. There was also never a way for the UK government to monitor whether or not Israel was using UK weapons in its decimation of Gaza—and it didn’t take long for specific UK weapons to be linked to deaths in Gaza.
Crucially, the 30 suspended contracts didn’t include the parts the UK produced for the F-35 fighter programme, which Israel relied on heavily to execute its genocide. Given that the UK’s parts made up 15% to every jet, it could have easily derailed the genocide in a single act by insisting that it wouldn’t contribute to the building of fighters that would go to Israel. But Starmer, Hermer and Lammy made a strategic exception for the deadliest arms agreement of all.
Stunningly, even though Starmer suspended these weapons, between October and December 2024 his government approved 20 new weapons licenses with Israel. These were worth £160 million in that quarter alone. The sales value exceeded the total value of UK arms export licenses between 2020-23, when the Conservatives were in power, meaning that the UK’s arms trade with Israel increased under Starmer. The UK’s import of Israeli military goods also rose from £55,000 in 2023 to nearly £5.9 million in 2025—a properly insane 10,589% increase that happened mostly under Starmer’s watch
The suspension of the weapons contracts was also clearly something the government didn’t want to introduce in the first place. I remember Lammy saying just how regretful he was that he’d been required to introduce the suspension—not termination, suspension—in the first place. He was deeply disappointed that the UK had to let down Israel but he was required to do this according to international law. Starmer’s Attorney General Richard Hermer, who happened to be a longstanding mate of his, went public on the pivotal role he played in determining the UK’s approach to selling weapons to Israel.
To dig deeper into the way the suspension of 30 weapons contracts acted as a cover for the UK’s deepening complicity, Hermer would have also advised Starmer that he could get away with refusing to acknowledge that Israel’s actions in Gaza amounted to a genocide, even though there was abundant knowledge that a genocide was well underway. The UK also carried out 50% of Israel’s spying missions over Gaza while ostensibly remaining on the right side of international law. It did this by arguing that it merely handed the Israeli government its findings and wasn’t responsible for how the Israeli government put the information to use. Hermer would have also advised Starmer on this. The proscription of the civil disobedience group Palestinian Action, which became the centrepiece of the government’s repression of the solidarity movement and enabled Israeli weapons manufacturer Elbit Systems to continue to produce weapons for the genocide, was also a pivotal part of Starmer’s strategy. Again Hermer would have given his judgement on the legality of this move. The numerous invitations to high-ranking Israeli politicians along with the multiple raids on the homes of investigative journalists deepened the UK’s complicity. Once again, Hermer’s opinion was almost certainly requested at every turn.
Solidarity protest in Hackney, 2025.
In short, Starmer/Lammy/Hermer made much of the suspension of 30 weapons contracts, and even laid out mangled conditions that might one day see the UK recognise a Palestinian state in principle. Meanwhile beneath the facade of trying to appear to be assertive with Israel, rather than a government that was beholden to Israel, Starmer made sure that the UK acted alongside the US and Germany as one of Netanyahu’s most influential and trusted allies.
Coincidentally, I grew up with Hermer in a Jewish-Zionist youth movement and we remained good friends right through to January 2025, which was the first time I got to see him following his appointment as Attorney General. During the course of the half-hour sandwich lunch he granted me I explained why I believed that the UK was complicit in Israel’s genocide, how Hermer was directly involved in the complicity, and why he should immediately resign as a matter of principle. I urged him to be open to continuing the conversation but never heard from him again.
Is there any reason to believe that Burnham and Miliband’s display of strength against Israel—the sincerity with which they’ve decided to bar £36 million of trade with terrorist West Bank settlers—is any different from the weapons contracts con trick? If this turns out to be the first and last measure, it will be reasonable to conclude that the measure was for show. If it turns out to be the start of a concerted move to end the UK’s ongoing complicity with Israel’s genocide, with the weapons supply ended and trade relations cut off, that would be incredible.
The genocide continues:
Israel has intensified its killing spree in Gaza during the last couple of months. It’s preventing the delivery of aid. It’s making sure that sanitation conditions remain catastrophic, access to clean water is severely limited, and disease and malnutrition continue to spiral.
Netanyahu’s relentless expansion of Israel’s control of Gaza is squeezing inhabitants into an ever smaller pocket. Israel currently controls 60% of the Gaza strip. He’s declared he wants to expand Israel’s occupation of the occupation of Gaza to 70%. He has also said he won’t honour the Gaza peace plan until Hamas unilaterally gives up all its weapons, even though that wasn’t the agreement he signed up to. Netanyahu is drawn to the peace plan, even though it will confirm the permanent subjugation of the Palestinians. He wants permanent war until the ethnic cleansing/genocide is complete.
Meanwhile Israel has been busy covering up the evidence of its genocide. It’s been denying the Palestinians the bulldozers they need to clear rubble and search for buried bodies. Nevertheless one Palestinian recovery team managed to retrieve the remains of 100 Palestinians who were killed in an airstrike on the Zeitoun neighborhood in Gaza City back in November 2023. Fifty-five of the victims were from one family, the Malka family. Around 70 of the 100 were children. It’s estimated that at least 8,000 more bodies remain trapped under the rubble—minus the bodies Israel is disposing of on the quiet.
As the election draws nearer, the genocidal promises flow ever more smoothly. Last week Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz declared that Israel is determined to remove all Palestinians from Gaza. He described “depopulation”—or ethnic cleansing—as the “only solution”, which sounds a lot like Hitler’s “Final solution”. More or less simultaneously National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir posted an AI-generated video of him sending Palestinians into a concentration camp. Israeli politicians love genocide intertextuality. No opposition leader is proposing a significantly different approach to Gaza and the West Bank. Outlining other election material that uses AI to portray extreme violence against Palestinians, Nour Odeh points out in Al Jazeera: “In such a fierce competition, brutality against Palestinians is not a shocking factor; it has become a selling point.”
All of this matters because beneath the complexities and contradictions of Miliband’s admittedly complicated task lies the stark reality of Burnham’s history of longstanding support for UK colonial wars in West Asia—he voted for the Iraq war—and Israel. He joined Labour Friends of Israel in 2015. Forty percent of his cabinet appointees are members of Labour Friends of Israel—Wes Streeting (defence), Yvette Cooper (health), Pat McFadden (work and pensions), Jonathan Reynolds (business and trade), Bridget Phillipson (equalities minister) and Ed Miliband. Burnham’s chief of staff, James Purnell, was chair of Labour Friends of Israel from 2002 to 2004. Before his appointment Purnell was the chief executive of Flint Global, which has close links to Amazon and Apple plus the arms industry. Purnell also served in the Blair government as work and pensions secretary, and, like Burnham, voted in favour of the 2003 war on Iraq.
So Burnham’s embedment in the UK’s pro-Israel lobby is very clear. He clearly understands that Starmer’s association with the genocide and his appointment of Peter Mandelson to the position of US ambassador (despite Mandelson’s close friendship with the convicted Zionist paedophile Jeffrey Epstein) turned out to be extremely damaging. This is why Burnham, who has shown no previous interest in Palestinian rights, wants to change the UK’s mood music around Palestine. However, if the trade sanctions turn out to be the end rather than the beginning of the reset this will become an issue that could well impact on his own popularity.
A recent Opinium poll shows that 46% of UK adults support a ban on trade with Israeli settlers with 18% opposed. Back in July a YouGov poll showed that 50% of UK adults believe that Israel is committing a genocide vs. 17% who say it isn’t. Within the Labour electorate the figure rises to 67%. This very sizeable fraction isn’t going to believe that the trade sanctions announced yesterday are remotely sufficient to end the UK’s complicity and place maximum pressure on Israel. More has to happen and it has to happen fast. If it doesn’t, Labour will continue to lose support to the Greens, which opens the possibility of either a left-of-centre collation or a right-of-centre coalition.
The huge number of people who object to the genocide aren’t going to compromise on this issue. There’s no way anyone with a conscience could do that. If Burnham crashes, that’s his responsibility. Will he and Miliband work out what needs to be done and do it?
Let’s keep campaigning and boycotting, because the campaigning and the boycotting are working. Every individual action counts as do the collective ones, beginning with the protest outside the Labour Party conference on Saturday 26 September, assembling at St. George’s Plateau in Liverpool, right by Lime Street station, 12:00 noon. The next national demonstration follows on 10 October in central London.