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This could have been the week that Keir Starmer buckled under pressure from his party and called for a ceasefire in Gaza. A fifth of his MPs have publicly backed one, including 13 frontbenchers and big names such as Anas Sarwar, Sadiq Khan and Andy Burnham. Starmer’s suggestion in a radio interview that Israel could be justified in defending itself by cutting off electricity and water to Gaza had already led to more than 25 Labour councillors quitting, while several shadow ministers are on resignation watch.
Labour’s divisions over Israel are more complicated than the party right vs the hard left
Instead of U-turning in the face of party mutiny, Starmer doubled down. A ceasefire freezes a conflict, he said, and would leave Hamas ‘with the infrastructure and the capabilities’ to carry out a second attack on Israel. It was not quite a Clause-IV moment, but a significant one nonetheless.
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