Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Can Starmer take the heat off the Labour ceasefire row?

Keir Starmer (Credit: Getty images)

Keir Starmer is under increasing pressure from Labour frontbenchers to change tack and back calls for a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas conflict. There are now more than a dozen such MPs who have defied the party line to call for one, along with Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar, Mayor of London Sadiq Khan and Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham.

This morning, shadow science, innovation and technology secretary Peter Kyle appeared to introduce a new line into the debate, saying it was ‘dancing on the head of a pin’ to differentiate between a ceasefire and a humanitarian pause. Starmer has backed the latter.

Starmer cannot keep releasing statements on Twitter: it just suggests that he is being chipped away at

Kyle first used this line on the BBC’s Sunday programme, and then again on Times Radio, suggesting it wasn’t a slip of the tongue. He initially argued in his BBC interview that the party was ‘united’, then said ‘some of the calls for a broader ceasefire: it’s just too ambiguous to know what it means in practice and what it means for Israel in terms of securing the release of the hostages’.

Isabel Hardman
Written by
Isabel Hardman
Isabel Hardman is assistant editor of The Spectator and author of Why We Get the Wrong Politicians. She also presents Radio 4’s Week in Westminster.

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