With every passing hour it seems as if we are close to having a new prime minister. Whether that happens sooner or later is, of course, still to be determined. But one thing seems pretty clear: despite Keir Starmer insisting at the weekend that he will serve two full terms, the odds are that there will be a new Labour leader come the next election.
Which begs so many questions. But for our purposes, two stand out. What, if any, difference will a new PM make to Middle East policy; and similarly to the fight against antisemitism?
To answer those, we need to remember the key points about Labour’s behaviour under Starmer. Within days of taking office in July 2024 it dumped its Conservative predecessor’s attempt (with Germany) to overturn the International Criminal Court’s arrest warrants for Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant. Then in September it suspended around 30 export licenses for sale of military equipment to Israel, followed by the biggest step of all – recognising the existence of a putative Palestinian state.
Those are the “set piece” moments, alongside a more general undercurrent of hostility to Israel’s military operations in Gaza, Lebanon and Iran. In short, Labour’s attitude under Starmer to Israel has moved from previous governments treating the Jewish state as a key ally and partner to seeing it as a reprobate state which needs to be brought to heel.
One can look at the individual views and qualities of the mooted successors to Starmer – Burnham, Miliband, Rayner and Streeting – to try to understand what policy might look like if one of them takes over, but the reality is that the general factors are far more important than any individual nuances.
First, the general disposition of the modern left. Much has been written about how and why the left has turned on Israel in recent decades. Suffice it to say for our purposes that a successful left politician who espoused Israel’s cause today would not be a successful left politician any longer. His or her peers would swiftly distance themselves. Even as far back as in 2010, Ed Miliband used his first Labour conference as leader to attack Israel and break with the Blair/Brown attitude of support and friendship.
But there is a more specific reason in the case of this government – the rise of the sectarian Muslim vote. Last week’s local elections showed that the voting patterns first seen at the last general election are now an established part of political demography. There are 37 constituencies with a Muslim population over 20 per cent. In another 73 seats the Muslim population is between 10 and 20 per cent. Labour is, to be blunt, running scared.
One should note how Starmer is repeatedly accused by these independent Muslim activists and their left allies of being “pro-genocide” by arming and supporting Israel. In this context the facts are irrelevant; the UK’s arms sales to Israel are puny and Israel would barely notice if they were to stop (unlike our own armed forces and security services in reverse, if Israel were to stop sales of military tech and offering intelligence support, on both of which we rely). The point is that Israel has been used as a stick with which to beat Starmer. Political common sense suggests that any successor would want to take the opportunity to distance him or herself and attempt to prevent similar attacks, which would mean deepening the overt hostility to Israel. Even if attacking Israel had not become part of the left’s DNA, these statistics would be pushing Labour further in that direction. As it is, Labour has become and will remain effectively an anti-Israel party – whoever takes over from Starmer.
This is the context in which we should consider antisemitism. Starmer made expelling antisemites a priority of his time in opposition; it was the subject of his first speech as leader. He deserves praise for this (although it is surely the very least one should expect from the leader of a mainstream party). But his record in power is appalling. Most obviously, while there is room for legitimate disagreement over whether the hate marches should have been allowed to take place once it became clear what they were fomenting with their chants and banners, it is unconscionable that it took Starmer until this month’s stabbing of two Jews in Golders Green to utter a word of criticism of the marches. Even after the Heaton Park synagogue deaths he said nothing about the marches.
Starmer’s refusal to act on antisemitism has been striking. He has – contrary to Labour’s opposition pledge – not proscribed the IRGC, one of the main sources of Jew hate and terror plots against the community. He has allowed the Iranian embassy to operate here with impunity. He has uttered warm words of support and left it at that. That means that while policy towards Israel is likely only to get worse, it is possible to imagine a new prime minister with the gumption to take serious action against Iranian operations in the UK – and making it into a political point that opposition to Israel does not mean being soft on antisemitism and those who promote it.
Whether that actually holds water, however, is another matter. One other direct driver of antisemitism is the spread of Jew hatred in mosques, whether from native Imams or from “hate preachers” either visiting or online. It’s true that the Conservatives were equally culpable in their refusal to act as Starmer, but beyond that, it is almost impossible to imagine any of his plausible successors taking action; see the earlier statistics about the importance of the sectarian Muslim vote.
The unwelcome conclusion is that while there may be space and a desire for action against Iranian operations in the UK under a new prime minister, the only likely direction of policy towards Israel is towards making a bad relationship even worse.
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