Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch has accused Andy Burnham of seeking to appease hardline backbenchers on Israel and pursuing policies on Middle East that are not “right for the United Kingdom”.
One of the new prime minister’s limited interventions on foreign policy was to apologise for Sir Keir Starmer’s stance on the conflict in Gaza and to say that the party should have called for a ceasefire sooner.
Yesterday, during his first major outings as defence secretary, Wes Streeting said that Israel had “fallen short” of British warfare standards.
He was also questioned by reporters about his private texts to Lord Mandelson revealed earlier this year in which he said that Israel was “committing war crimes before our eyes” and accused Netanyahu’s government of talking “the language of ethnic cleansing”.
Politico reported that he did not repeat the comments but responded: “I’m not going to pretend I didn’t make those comments.”
Speaking to reporters on Thursday morning, Badenoch hit out at Streeting and the new government’s seeming focus on Israel at the expense of other issues.
“I think that yet again, this is a government and a prime minister and a defence secretary and even a foreign secretary that have the wrong priorities,” she told the JC.
Badenoch then made reference to an incident in which tech-firm OpenAI, which is behind ChatGPT, admitted that an advanced AI model went “rogue” and launched a cyber-attack, which she said truly concerned her.
“This excessive focus on what's going on in Israel and Palestine is because that's what their [Labour] backbenchers are concerned about,” the Conservative leader added.
She went on to highlight what she saw as the importance of Britain’s relationship with Israel and life-saving positive impact it has on British citizens.
“I had my security briefings. I remember as trade secretary how important the relationship with Israel was. Whether people like it or not, there are British citizens alive today because of intelligence that Israel gave us.
"I am very worried about a lack of cooperation because this government wants to please its backbenchers,” she added.
The leader of the opposition went on to attack the government and accused them of looking inward rather than at the challenges facing the country.
“They need to do what is right for the country, not what is right for the Labour Party. And right now, Andy Burnham seems to be managing the country for the Labour Party, not for the United Kingdom, and not for the people of the United Kingdom.”
Earlier, before taking questions from reporters, Badenoch had given a speech in which she accused the new prime minister of plotting to increase taxation in order to pay for some of his new policy priorities.
“Andy Burnham seems to have no interest in cutting spending, no interest in cutting the welfare bills. I made an offer to him to help get welfare cuts down in Parliament. He replied to my tweets about his t-shirt, but he didn't reply to my letter about defence.
“We have seen this movie before. Tax rises are coming. I have bigger ambitions for our country. I have an optimistic vision for Britain. If we want to be a richer country, a country where the cost of living doesn't bite so hard when tough times hit, we need to create wealth, not destroy it.”
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