When I worked for the Labour Party, I remember discussing the electoral significance of foreign policy with a colleague in my team. “Foreign policy doesn’t matter until all of a sudden it really does,” she rightly said.
Those words have been ringing in my ears for several days now. This division over the response to the Israel-Hamas war is about policy but it’s also about principles – and that’s why it runs so deep and so many Labour figures feel compelled to speak out. Foreign policy is politics at its most fundamental – it is about life and death struggles for peace and justice.
One thing it is not about (yet at least) is Keir Starmer. While Scottish Labour Leader Anas Sarwar, London Mayor Sadiq Khan, West Yorkshire Mayor Tracy Brabin and Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham have all publicly used their profile and democratic mandates to put forward a different line, calling for a ceasefire, none have made it personal.
Even Labour’s rebellious frontbenchers, 13 of whom have now broken collective responsibility to call for a ceasefire, are not making it about Keir Starmer. There are no calls for Starmer to resign – not from the Labour left, affiliated trade unions or even the most disgruntled backbenchers.
However, the breadth of the division within the Labour Party is unparalleled. In Westminster, nearly half of all backbench MPs have called for a ceasefire. In Wales, while Labour’s First Minister Mark Drakeford has called for a humanitarian pause, “so that aid can urgently get to those who need it”, 11 Labour Members of the Senedd have called for a ceasefire. In Scotland over half of the MSPs, including Anas Sarwar, are backing a ceasefire. Among Labour’s affiliates, all are signed up to the TUC call for a ceasefire.
Over 20 Labour groups on local councils have issued statements backing a ceasefire (including Broxtowe, Leicester, Leeds, Glasgow and Luton). Over 30 Labour councillors have resigned from the party over the leadership’s stance – costing the party control of the council in Oxford and in Blackburn. Nothing like this happened on this scale over the Iraq War 20 years ago.
Twenty years ago, Britain’s entry into the Iraq War dominated every news bulletin. Tony Blair’s stance on the war, “shoulder to shoulder” with a neoconservative Republican president, divided the party immensely – and now very few people still defend it.
On a media round on Monday morning, Shadow Cabinet member Darren Jones rejected comparisons with Iraq. And on one level he’s right to: Labour is not in government and whereas Blair pulling back could have stopped the war, Keir Starmer is still only the Leader of the Opposition. However, it is worth remembering that it was from that position that then opposition leader Ed Miliband blocked David Cameron’s attempts to enter the Syrian conflict in 2013.
Jones went further and claimed that “Britain is not in any way involved in the conflict”. But that is really not true. The UK sells millions of pounds worth of arms to Israel every year. Many of the bombs and the planes that deliver them are British-made or made with British manufactured components.
When the UN condemned potential breaches of international humanitarian law (i.e. war crimes) by Saudi Arabia in Yemen, then shadow foreign secretary Hilary Benn called for the suspension of UK arms sales to the Saudis – much to the chagrin of some Labour backbenchers who had accepted Saudi largesse and hospitality. Benn once again sits in Starmer’s Shadow Cabinet, and a repeat of that principled stand could help cool tensions.
But it is unlikely, since Starmer and his spokespeople repeat the mantra “Israel has a right to defend itself”. Of course it does, but like all rights it is limited by the impact on others, and it does not have a right to perpetrate war crimes – which the siege of Gaza, indiscriminate bombardment, and alleged use of white phosphorous in civilian areas all are.
What has made this conflict cut so deep into the Labour Party is that it strikes at the fundamental commitment across the party that believes in universal human rights and international law, equally applied.
To believe this is about factionalism – or worse, religion – is to misread the situation entirely. As one Blackburn councillor, who recently resigned from the party, said: “The values of social justice, equality and human rights have been abandoned by the party. The humanitarian principles of the party do not exist anymore.”
When asked about growing dissent within the party, Darren Jones told ITV’s Good Morning Britain, “some people have a direct connection to the region”, and the issue was “emotive”. But this is not about ethnicity, religion or factionalism. Conflating high profile Muslims in the party with automatic calls for a ceasefire is borderline racist. Just as assuming someone sympathises with Netanyahu’s government in Israel because they are Jewish would be antisemitic.
Members feel patronised too. CLPs (constituency Labour Party) are banned by diktat from even discussing the most important issue of our times, while both MPs and councillors were given “very strongly advice” that they “should not under any circumstances attend” Palestine solidarity marches. Both a handful of CLPs and some elected officials have ignored such messages.
Damage is being done with every statement, every tweet, every failure to admit and apologise for mistakes (whether that’s over Starmer’s LBC interview or the visit to the Cardiff mosque). A leadership that looked strong, suddenly looks brittle.
It is in times of crisis that leadership is tested. This may not prove electorally damaging for Keir Starmer or fatal for his leadership. But, like Blair after Iraq, his relationships across the party, including with Labour’s dedicated members and supporters, have suffered lasting damage.
Unlike Blair, Starmer has a chance to put this right. He could re-unify the party by joining them and the international community – the United Nations secretary-general, the UN General Assembly, aid agencies like Oxfam and Save the Children, human rights groups like Amnesty and Human Rights Watch – in backing a ceasefire and a political process for peace and justice.
Keir Starmer said a year ago that the Labour Party should be “the political wing of the British people”. Well 76 per cent of the British public is calling for an immediate ceasefire. It’s time to be their political wing.
Andrew Fisher is the former executive director of policy at the Labour Party
