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Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
At this ugly juncture of history, Sir Keir Starmer finds himself facing perhaps his most public test of leadership. His outrage at the Hamas atrocities of October 7, his belief that Israel must be allowed to defend herself, and his refusal to call for a ceasefire in Gaza, has prompted rebellion from the London mayor, many councillors and almost a quarter of Labour MPs. Will he continue to hold the line on Israel? He must.
The past two weeks have been miserable for many parliamentarians, especially Muslim MPs and those representing constituencies where many voters have Muslim backgrounds. Some worry about the electoral consequences. They remember George Galloway ousting Labour’s Oona King from Bethnal Green and Bow in 2005, claiming that she and other New Labour MPs had “the blood of 100,000 Iraqis on their hands”. They fear that seats like Poplar, East Bradford and Glasgow are vulnerable. Some old hands, though, warn their colleagues against being “skittish”. They argue there was only one Galloway, that Labour voters in England and Wales have no real alternative, and that the SNP could pick up at best two seats over the issue.
Concerns about the desperate plight of Palestinians are shared far beyond Muslim voters. MPs are receiving large volumes of emails, ranging from concerns to threats, and social media amplifies the extreme positions. Khalid Mahmood, Labour MP for Birmingham Perry Barr, points out that “many people haven’t understood what Hamas are: they’ve just seen social media clips glorifying them”. Starmer has not helped himself by having to clarify a radio interview, which looked uncaring to many, that Israel had a right to withhold power and water from Gaza as long as it was done within international law. Several MPs who back Starmer’s stance are nevertheless frustrated at what seemed a glib response, part of what one called his “tendency to deal in the moment”. Since holding talks with Muslim MPs this week, he now echoes the government’s call for “humanitarian pauses” to let aid in. That is the position of Joe Biden’s administration, a Democratic White House which Starmer rightly wishes to align with.
Threats to his leadership should not be overdone. Some of the councillors who resigned were elected when the Corbynista Momentum movement was at its zenith. One, speaking on Radio 4, lamented the deaths of “over 1,000 children” in Gaza, while failing to mention the murder of Israeli babies. She called on Starmer to “stand up for humanity” — which didn’t seem to include Jews. He will be quietly relieved to be rid of such people.
On the ceasefire, he is right. The desire for an immediate end to bloodshed is totally understandable; the situation is unbearable to witness. But those who call for a ceasefire would give, in effect, a licence for Hamas to continue its pursuit of wiping Israel from the map.
As a lawyer, Starmer understands Israel’s international obligations better than his activists. Its stated war aim, of destroying Hamas’s capability, is consistent with proportionality in the law of self-defence. Asking Israel to agree a ceasefire before it has achieved that goal would be asking it to forgo the right to defend itself, given that Hamas does not want peace. The group, and its sponsors in Iran, no doubt hope to draw Israel into a protracted, bloody conflict, which could backfire on the Israelis. But no sovereign democracy whose people have been taken as hostages would sit on its hands; and no other sovereign government can realistically ask it to do so.
The febrile atmosphere is being stoked by Islamo-fascists attaching themselves to leftwing protests — something the former Labour leaders Tony Blair and Ed Miliband faced too. Demonstrators shouting “jihad” near Whitehall last weekend were members of Hizb ut-Tahrir, an organisation both Blair and David Cameron after him tried to ban, which wants a worldwide caliphate. Hizb and its allies are the modern-day equivalent of Oswald Mosley’s Jew-hating Black Shirts, the fascists who stormed menacingly through London’s East End in the 1930s. Today’s well-meaning middle-classes, who march to show their concern for the desperate plight of Palestinians, must be careful not to become their useful idiots.
Where were they, I wonder, when the Chinese Communist party was building concentration camps for Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims? Did they complain when coalition forces wiped out Isis in Mosul, killing around 10,000 innocent civilians? What have they done since Iran’s religious police beat Mahsa Amini to death for not wearing a hijab, an outrage which has ignited wave after wave of rebellion by brave Muslim women who need western support?
When Israel is involved, things change. The late Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks put it this way. “In the Middle Ages, Jews were persecuted because of their religion. In the 19th and 20th centuries they were reviled because of their race. Today, Jews are attacked because of the existence of their nation state.”
Starmer has brought his party a long way from the days when it became the first political party to be censured by the Equality and Human Rights Commission since the far-right BNP, which tried to unseat the veteran Jewish MP Margaret Hodge in Barking. There will be more challenges ahead if he becomes prime minister: not least whether to adopt Labour’s agreed definition of Islamophobia. Labour’s current divisions show just how hard this will be to navigate. For now, the test is whether Starmer can hold the line, explain it, and face down opponents in his own party. That is leadership.