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On the final day of Labour’s party conference in ۲۰۲۳, when the public was still reeling from the brutal Hamas attack on Israel just days before, Keir Starmer took to the airwaves for the traditional broadcast round – but gave one interview that would have particularly damaging fallout.
Sitting down with LBC’s Nick Ferrari, the then opposition leader asserted Israel’s right to defend itself, a stance that was in line with the broad political consensus at the time. But then he also appeared to suggest it had “the right” to withhold power and water from Palestinian civilians.
“Obviously, everything should be done within international law,” he added. His comments were clipped up and shared widely across social media, attracting the fury of many on the left.
It took Starmer’s team a week to clarify his remarks, which they insisted had been misinterpreted. But the damage had been done.
Dozens of Muslim councillors threatened to quit the party. In an attempt to heal divisions and reassure them that he understood their anxieties, the Labour leader wrote them a letter. But many felt that it wasn’t enough.
The following month, party tensions over the leadership’s stance towards Gaza deepened, when Starmer was hit by a major rebellion over a vote for a ceasefire, which saw eight of his frontbenchers, including Jess Phillips, quit.
The row highlighted a deep tension that has run through the Labour party for years on a subject on which it has a complicated history.
Since its inception, Labour had supported the creation of the state of Israel. The argument went that a party that believed in social justice had to protect a people who had been through the Holocaust.
A more critical view of the Israeli government began to emerge as a result of Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza under a series of hardline rightwing leaders. The focus shifted to showing solidarity with the Palestinian people instead.
Under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership, some justified criticism of Israel’s conduct spilled over into antisemitism, with the EHRC finding “unlawful harassment” of Jewish members, though the former leader denies it was ever tolerated
Some in Labour felt that Starmer – who enforced a zero tolerance approach to antisemitism which saw swathes of leftwingers, including Corbyn himself, forced out – ended up struggling with Gaza in part because of a desire to draw a line between himself and his predecessor.
As Labour won power in ۲۰۲۴, international condemnation of Israel over the horrors it was inflicting on Palestinian civilians grew. The government struggled to convince the British public it was doing enough. What it did do, didn’t cut through.
“People just got stuck on that LBC interview. Keir never recovered from it. Whatever we did – and it was a lot – people didn’t seem to notice it,” one senior Labour figure said.
Labour lost – and has continued to lose – support on its progressive flank, a key part of the electoral coalition that Andy Burnham is now trying to win back with his apology for Labour’s initial response to Israel’s military action in Gaza, and a promise to put more pressure on the Israeli government.
Any action will have to be calibrated with very real concerns about the potential impact on Jewish communities in the UK, already fearful amid rising antisemitism which Burnham witnessed close up in Manchester.
It wasn’t just far-left voters who abandoned the party, or Muslim communities that instead turned to pro-Gaza independents at the election. It was young people and middle class graduates who left for the resurgent Greens.
Labour activists across the country anecdotally report how the issue comes up on the doorstep all the time – at Westminster byelections, in Scotland and Wales, in the English local elections – and has shown no sign of abating as the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza continues.
The hope is that Burnham’s ascendancy gives Labour another hearing. “Andy gives us with a real reset moment. It’s a tonal shift, more than anything, and how we talk about what’s going on in Gaza. Lots of progressive voters left us. This gives us a chance to try to win them back,” one insider said.
But it is unclear, thus far, how much of substance will actually change, with the prime minister-in-waiting simply saying he’ll “look at” further sanctions and measures to ban trade in goods with illegal settlements, or whether the shift will be mostly a matter of tone – and whether, in either case, it will be enough to win back those who have moved on.
