Tom Tugendhat has accused Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband and the Labour Party of ignoring “reality” in the Middle East in pursuit of “narrow political advantage”.
Speaking at a packed Conservative Friends of Israel reception on Monday evening – attended by an estimated 300 party activists, MPs and officials – the shadow foreign secretary paid tribute to the key security partnership between Britain and Israel.
He told the crowd: “My job is to defend the interests of the British people. I'm very much a friend of Israel, but I don't speak for Israel. I speak for Britain.
“My interest, solely, purely, completely, totally, is the defence of the British people and British interests. And let me be very clear. That is why I am a friend of Israel, not despite. That is why I am a friend of Israel.
“I am a friend of Israel because Israel has been and is a friend of the United Kingdom. Israel is an essential security partner.
“Israel is a very, very important defence partner – by the way, that's Israel selling to us, not the other way round. Israel is an essential partner for building a safer, or prosperous, or peaceful Middle East.”
Tugendhat then attacked Labour’s approach to Israel, saying that “the idea that somehow targeting the Israeli government, but ignoring the violence of Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and any other number of different groups, is somehow going to reinforce a two-state solution, is absurd”.
Delivering a speech without notes, he continued: “You know that this Labour government knows that too… They know it, but they choose not to say it.
“They know it, but they choose to leverage it because they see narrow political advantage. Well, I'm afraid that is not the kind of country we are. It is not the kind of country we should be”.
Tugendhat, a Catholic who has Jewish ancestry, also issued a cautionary note about rising antisemitism in Britain and the excessive demonisation of Israel.
“When you target Jews, when you single out Israel, when you decide that one particular community is intolerable, well, do you remember the lesson?
“My family do. I'm sure many of your families do. 80, 90 years ago, the lesson was clear: when you start with Jews, it never ends with Jews. When you start with hate, it never ends with one group. When you start targeting someone, you end up making everyone a victim, and that is what is going on today.”
Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp also attacked Labour, accusing Miliband of “pandering to extremists in a desperate attempt to claw back votes he's lost to the Green Party” in pursuing anti-Israel measures.
He went on to blast the Green Party, whom he said “appear to have been hijacked by some sort of Islamist sect, and they now spout bile at their conference just a few days ago”.
He labelled their adoption of the “Zionism is racism” motion “disgraceful” and said it had “no place whatsoever in our politics”, especially “at a time when the dark shadow of antisemitism has fallen across parts of our society” and British Jews were subject to terror attacks.
Senior frontbenchers Andrew Griffith, the shadow chancellor, and party chair Kevin Hollinrake also spoke at the reception, as did London mayoral hopeful James Cleverly and CFI chair Greg Smith along with development minister Wendy Morton and former attorney general Sir Michael Ellis.
The room erupted with cries of “shame” when Lord Pickles, CFI chair in the House of Lords who compered the event, raised the Green Party’s adoption of a motion equating Zionism with racism.
The audience enthusiastically applauded after he defiantly said: “Because I am an anti-racist, I am a Zionist. Because I love freedom and liberty, I stand with Israel”.
Israel’s Charge d’Affaires, Christian Cantor, who described the years since October 7 as “some of the most challenging that the people of Israel have ever faced,” described the Conservative Party under Kemi Badenoch as a “truly great friend to the Israeli people.”
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