I was sceptical Starmer made Labour safe for Jews to return – sadly I was right

But it seemed very clear that Starmer was simply flattering the community with synagogue visits and nice words while holding a very different set of values deep down.

Maybe that’s doing the man a disservice. In truth, he seems to have no values at all, save for those of political survival and expediency.

So it was that after campaigning hard to put Corbyn in number 10, Starmer won the Labour leadership promising left-wing continuity before turning on the Corbynites once in power – then indulging them when his political capital waned.

Similarly, he appeared to support Israel after October 7, then buckled under pressure from his backbenchers and became increasingly hostile to the Jewish state until it got to the point where his foreign policy is being literally congratulated by Hamas.

Surely Starmer must have known that promising to recognise a Palestinian state unless Israel ends its military campaign simply motivates Hamas to keep fighting?

Not only that, it gives the terror group even greater motivation to starve their own population by disrupting aid distribution and to keep the hostages in captivity.

As Hamas official Basem Naim put it, “victory and liberation are closer than we expected” after Starmer’s statement. In other words, the Prime Minister even outdid Hamas’s expectations in giving them Britain’s backing.

“International support for Palestinian self-determination shows we are moving in the right direction,” the Hamas official said.

What direction is that? One of murder, rape, mutilation, kidnap, starvation and the use of human shields. Make no mistake: this is now what Britain effectively supports. That’s not my view, it is the view of Hamas. And Israel, for that matter.

This depraved state of affairs is all a far cry from the Keir Starmer who campaigned for our votes last year. “[Starmer] is a mensch,” wrote the Labour peer Ruth Anderson in the JC.

“And he deserves this opportunity to lead our country in the years ahead. He has earned our trust and we in turn owe him a fair hearing as he turns from campaigning to governing.”

How has that one worked out? I cannot be alone in feeling that the reality has not lived up to the promise.

Looking back over recent months, Starmer’s condemnation of Israel has outweighed his criticism of Hamas by a factor of at least 5:1, by my estimation.

It is the Middle Eastern democracy, not the jihadi group that started this war, that has received the brunt of his wrath. The suspension of arms export licences. The sanctions. The escalating rhetoric (“appalling”, he said, meaning Israel, not Hamas).

And now the threat of recognition of a Palestinian state, seemingly designed to encourage Hamas to harden its demands. Truly, it was as if the jihadis had written the script for him.

I remember JC columnist Melanie Phillips speaking out passionately against the election of Starmer at an event we held in South Hampstead synagogue back in May 2024.

At the time, her voice was all but drowned out by the other panellists, Dame Louise Ellman, now-Labour MP Josh Simons, and head of the Jewish Labour Movement Mike Katz, all of whom swore blind that Labour had changed and it was safe to go back.

“A number of people have been left in the Party, some in positions of significant influence, who have views which are in my view obnoxious and dangerous to Jewish people and to the state of Israel,” Phillips warned. Well, she was right.

Don’t get me wrong, in many ways Labour is hardly as bad as it was under Corbyn. But in recent months it has been bending inexorably against Israel and Jews in a way that can only be described as treacherous.

Corbyn once notoriously described Hamas as his “friends”. Starmer, of course, would never describe the terror group in that way. But actions speak louder than words. Ask Hamas today what they think of Starmer and they would almost certainly use that same term.

It seems unbelievable, but in effectively aligning British foreign policy with the agenda of Hamas, Starmer has made Britain basically a friend of jihadism. That’s an indignity that even Corbyn was unable to achieve.