November 16, 2023 - 7:30am
In the final year of Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership, a common refrain from those who claimed to care about progressive causes — but who could not support Labour — was that the party needed “Corbynism without Corbyn”. The problem was not the legislative agenda, or even contentious internal reforms such as mandatory re-selection, but simply the man himself.
Yet the notion Starmer could offer any kind of continuity was always absurd — not least on foreign policy. The Labour leader’s decision not to back a ceasefire in Gaza yesterday should come as no surprise. After all, as Director of Public Prosecutions he was allegedly furious when Theresa May, then Home Secretary, blocked the extradition of autistic hacker Gary McKinnon to the United States. Such was Starmer’s sense of obligation to Washington that he boarded a plane the very next day to meet with the deputies of Eric Holder, then US attorney general, to make amends. In a similar vein, Starmer fought tooth and nail for the extradition of Julian Assange to the United States. Not only have the records of all four meetings Starmer attended in Washington since been destroyed, but so too have sensitive CPS files on the Assange case during his tenure.
Then there is the fact Starmer is a member of the Trilateral Commission. This is less the perfidious cabal of conspiratorial cliché, and more the standard influencer-network which has become the default of Western politics as the powerful seek to insulate themselves from democratic scrutiny. The Labour leader is the only serving MP to be associated with the Commission, whose other members include Mario Monti (who led an unelected “technocratic” government in Italy between 2011 and 2013), Larry Fink (the godfather of ESG) and Henry Kissinger. To compound all this, Starmer has himself admitted he prefers Davos to Westminster. In other words, he is a committed Atlanticist and the last person one should expect to break with its political injunctions.
If one wasn’t aware of Starmer’s biographical particulars, this would seem inexplicable. After all, 76% of the British public supports a ceasefire — a figure which rises to 89% among Labour voters. They are joined by the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Pope, and 250 eminent British lawyers. Other polling finds that Brits are equally sympathetic to the plights of the Palestinians and the Israelis. Fundamentally, support for a ceasefire is politically expedient — a concept which for Starmer is usually sacrosanct. And yet here that is not the case.
Expediency does, however, explain why 56 Labour MPs defied the whip last night — including 10 members of the shadow front bench. Because of Labour’s relative size that means 28% of the party’s MPs defied their leader over a ceasefire, just 1% less than in the vote to invade Iraq in 2003. Rather than imposing his authority, Starmer’s red line invited needless confrontation.
As the Tories crumble into seeming oblivion this is all — barring several seats — of little electoral consequence. But a rebellion of this size, while some polls have Labour leading the Tories by 30 points, underscores how 2024 is not simply 1997 redux. The majority could be even bigger, but the vote behind the next Labour government will be far more soft.
When asked in 2020 which former party leader most inspired him, Starmer responded with Harold Wilson. Yet Wilson’s supreme pragmatism kept Britain out of the Vietnam War — one of the country’s few acts of insubordination towards Washington since 1940. Such independence of mind today, let alone national self-confidence, feels implausible from either party.
Join the discussion
Join like minded readers that support our journalism by becoming a paid subscriber
To join the discussion in the comments, become a paid subscriber.
Join like minded readers that support our journalism, read unlimited articles and enjoy other subscriber-only benefits.
SubscribeHamas are a terrorist organisation. They need to be stopped, and since they do not play by any vague international rules of warfare or even humanity they cannot be treated in the same way as a regular enemy state. A ceasefire implies a mutual respect for humanity on both sides. Hamas want (very openly) for not only the complete destruction of Israel, but of all Jews globally. There is no vague respect for humans there. A pause, yes. A ceasefire? No.
Indeed, there already was a ceasefire in place on October 7.
That ceasfire was broken by Israel who allowed Hamas to attack them. Er,Um, Well that’s The Gazan pov.
Are you suggesting it was effectively a false flag operation? I have heard several rumours to that effect.. reliable sources say it was utterly impossible for the IDF not to know in advance and immediately it began.. Also that many of the atrocities never happened and the reports are full of staged fakery; and the IDF killed many Israelis due to the Hannibal directive?
Ignorant, anti-Semitic bullshit.
You were born 70 years too late, and in the wrong country.
He was being sarcastic. If you cannot recognise that fact then any further discussion is wasted on you.
The whole article could be seen as an exercise in mild sarcasm.
No!
Maybe best to stop watching RTE news?
Not true. Israel was bombing Gaza on a continual basis before Oct 7th, indeed for many years, over and over, as a matter of routine for decades! But Western MSM didn’t bother reporting it!!
No doubt, Mr. O’Mahony, the Irish potato famine never happened but was mere play-acting by grossly over-fed Irish farmers out to defame the British. Nor did Hitler seek to defeat Britain during World War II since the Battle of Britain was staged as was the Normandy landing for the purposes of promoting the German movie industry. I’m sure you would agree, since you clearly live in a fantasy world where goblins reign supreme.
I am really not convinced the pause idea has been in anyway thought through. What is it supposed to achieve that Hamas cannot easily thwart? Ie it would hand control to Hamas. Who decides when the pause is over and therefore de facto authorises action to continue, thereby accepting at least some responsibility for the consequences of that action? There would be as much disagreement about that.
As far as the % who support a ceasefire goes, I would like to see the % of those who have troubled themselves to find out the full background to the situation and watched the Oct 7th videos recorded by Hamas, that support a ceasefire. Personally my view is: there was a pause at the start to allow civilians to move, it is now time to get the job done as quickly as possible as in the long run that will save more lives on both sides.
Israel is not blameless and must enter into a meaningful peace process for Gaza and West Bank once its military objectives (removal of Hamas capability to attempt to inflict genocide on Israel) have been achieved. Even though Hamas have no respect for international law, Israel must respect the law of armed conflict and do all it can to reduce civilian casualties, which may mean conducting operations in a manner that put its soldiers at greater risk.
Finally, where are the calls for the Hamas rocket attacks which were ongoing before Oct 7th and have intensified since, some of which malfunction and kill civilians in Gaza to cease?
You’re of course right for most of your comment, of which I agree with. I suppose my ‘pause’ I referred to was to allow in humanitarian aid for those still there, but you’re right that Hamas could, and likely would, use that as a time to recoup and try to retake control. Hamas need to be eradicated, and then as you say, a meaningful attempt with the Palestinian people to come to a two-state solution needs to be had.
Hamas is NOT a terrorist organisation but does have freedom fighters guilty of terrorist acts (far fewer than reported however, as we now learn). I guarantee, if GB had been overrun by German forces in WW2 there would be thousands of so-called British terrorists fighting the evil colonialists.. and you would call them freedom fighters. And indeed so would I.
Hamas is legally a terrorist organisation in this country and support of it is also illegal. You are sailing pretty close to the wind here.
And on a point of accuracy, Gaza wasn’t overrun by Israeli soldiers on Oct 6th – there weren’t any. Israel unilaterally withdrew from Gaza in 2005, and their reward was rockets fired indiscriminately into Israel for years, and then on October 7th, a disgusting medieval rampage.
Hamas very much is a terrorist organisation, and designated so by the UK and many other nations and the European Union. You’re not only incredibly wrong, you’re skirting close to the law, since even supporting Hamas is a criminal offence.
It’s very easy for 76% (of those asked, it’s not 76% of the British public) to say they want a ceasefire. The British aren’t dealing with the reality of it, not living there, are not under threat and most haven’t got a clue. Most of Labour are wannabe working class gobshites still living out their Che Guevara fantasies in the student union. The sad part is that any of them think that the British opposition has any authority on world affairs. I’ll put it down to British parochialism.
I take your point about the irrelevance of British public opinion when we are not involved in a desperate fight for survival but check the link in the article. That 76% comes from yet another YouGov poll – a dubious source to say the least.
Anyway, it is all too easy for journalists to brandish opinion poll results as though they were unquestionable proof of the public mood.
Of course Che Guevara was a torturer and murder so at least Labour wannabe working class gobshites are being consistent.
“Most of Labour are wannabe working class gobshites” Mostly supported by deeply middle class, self-righteous types.
Labour has a new song for its party conference :-
‘All we are saying , is give Hamas a chance.’
Firstly, when Starmer does finally face the ballot box, the war in Gaza will be off the front page. But, Starmer hopes, the memory of him doing the right thing will still be in the minds of those swing voters and left of centre Tories who had doubted him.
Secondly, when the public is asked a binary question like do you support a ceasefire, they are far more likely to answer yes than no because nobody likes to see civilians dying. But if, as seems to be the case, the UK populations sympathies lie equally with Israel and the Palestinians, Starmer is correct to think he will – at worst – gain as much as he loses by sticking to his stance.
Finally, the Labour MPs who voted against the whip either have large Muslim communities in their electorate or are Muslim themselves. So they would wouldn’t they?
I’m not sure how 76% v 24% turns out to the equal.. can you explain? My maths are a little rusty
I hate myself for even replying to an anti-semitic conspiracy troll like you, but if you actually read my post I’m referring to the many polls which show the UK public’s sympathies lie equally with the Israelis and the Palestinians.
While our police do nothing, German police have carried out multiple raids on Islamic groups in Germany.
I presume you mean Islamist groups? Try and get it right will you!
Muhammad himself was quite a bit more extreme than some of these “Islamist groups”. Hezbollah, for example, doesn’t come close to Muhammad’s execrable behaviour. It is the most extreme of the extremists who are authentically Islamic.
I mean Muslim groups.
Sir Keir’s phoney moderate front to the Labour party is exposed as the sham it always was. The hard left tendency was always there but of course Sir Keir was hoping they’d keep their stupid gobs shut until after the ‘inevitable’ election victory next year. Once safely in office his activist MPs could get on with the social engineering they so yearn for (aided and abetted by a sympathetic administrative class).
Hopefully, the British electorate are starting to wake up to what a Labour government would really be like – ie. rule by activists who cannot tolerate those who disagree with them.
John McDonnell on R4 during the Labour conference in Liverpool, when asked why he now didn’t oppose Starmer replied that it didn’t matter who is the figurehead because it is the labour movement that gets into power. So yes, they all seem to be getting ready inside their Starmer shaped Trojan horse.
..unlike the present Tory government who are busying promoting free speech and freedom of conscience, right?
Spoken with the reflex whataboutery I’ve come to expect of the true Labour devotee.
These calls for a ceasefire are like a man who tries to mug a martial artist, and suddenly becomes an advocate of peace and mercy when he finds himself in a chokehold.
I read this article as a revengeful attack by a friend of Jeremy Corbyn. I did find it amusing that a Marxist should cite The Archbishop of Canterbury, The Pope and 250 eminent lawyers in aid of his arguments. Other than that I found it wholly unsurprising and completely uninspiring. Unherd can surely find better stuff than this to publish.
Opinion polls keep getting cited in articles like this without providing the questions posed. It is important to have that information to understand on what basis a ceasefire is supported. Most people with little understanding of the geopolitics of the region and of the history of this conflict will respond positively to a question that just asks a simple ‘do you support a ceasefire between Gaza & Israel’, because of course majority of us wish to see an end to killing and suffering. However, if the poll were to present context in their poll such as: following Hamas (a terrorist organisation controlling Gaza) breaching a previous ceasefire to undertake it’s assault on Israeli civilians on 7 October & kidnapping 240 of them & their subsequent statements that they intend to undertake further assaults, do you support a ceasefire which will allow them to reorganise and rearm or would you support pauses in operation and efforts to create safe harbours for civilians’, I think you’d get a different result. Just reporting numbers from polls as the writer has done here is unhelpful at the least & at the worst becomes a tool for propaganda.
Agree. The devil is in the details
Several of your premises built i to your long question are false. Indeed they are all false, every one of them!
“Why is Keir Starmer opposing a ceasefire?”Even I can answer that one, as can anyone with half a brain cell.
because, if any half trained monkey can see that civilian deaths (the more the very much better) can be used to halt your enemy in it’s tracks and stop them from destroying you, then anyone, with an ideological bent, and a Stalinesque regard for death and destruction, whether the enemy’s , or your own population, will use it again and again and again. It might limit the body count, and emisseration in the short term, but, a bit like some international aid, it just keeps the ball, and the logistics of the warring parties going on and on and on.
But didn’t those babies and dead medical staff put up a great fight against the IDF all the same? Still the heroic IDF fighters, against all the odds won a great victory and captured the hospital ..at least one laptop and a number of planted weapons captured as well! A great victory celebrated by the raising of the Israeli flag by the brave baby killers. What an elite fighting force!
How on earth does a nakedly antisemitic comment like this pass moderation??
Under Old New Labour the UK witnessed the largest upward transfer of wealth in its history. We should never forget that it was a Labour chancellor who changed the way inflation is calculated in order to conceal from his own voters the extent to which he had stitched them up. Let’s not even talk about the catastrophic wars, immigration policies and anti-democratic legislation.
Anyone who expects anything different from New New Labour, guided as it is by the same toxic cabal as it’s predecessor, is utterly deluded.
Clearly the author is a pro-Hamas apologist who condones wanton killing and raping of women and children. Hamas is beyond a terror organization and it is certainly not ome liberation movement. Hamas is cancer that needs to be completely removed if there is to be any chance of peace in the region. And for that matter the PLO also need to be replaced (albeit very unlikely) by an organization that is prepared to live in peace side by side with Israel. But unfortunately the Palestinians have never missed a chance to miss an opportunity for peace and prosperity.
I award you an F. ‘ must do better; a lot more research is needed!
Hamas murdered 30 children, Israel’s current total during these attacks is over 4000
Those babies were terrorist-adjacent and the noble IDF does everything it can to avoid killing civilians, short of not shooting or bombing them.
The allies murdered over six million Germans and Japanese in WWII. I think you see my point.
Why should or would Gazans be taken in by Britain? They are Arabs and are the obligation of their fellow Arabs.
Happily that doesn’t apt to British Jews, right? You’re giving naivety a bad name!
Many Arab states consider the Gazans to be troublemakers, even without Hamas. That’s why the Gazan (Southern) border with Egypt is kept under control. “Let Israel deal with the rabble rather than many Arab states have to put up with them.” If Hamas had applied one tenth of the money given them then they would never be short of water and if they took advice from Israel (Jews, Arabs (even Buddists,etc) They could make the desert bloom.
Why does the SNP, whose amendment it was that the vote related to, imagine that either the Israelis or Hamas is paying any attention to the UK Parliament? Pointless virtue signalling.
I suspect the SNP care very little about a ceasefire but rather more for the political point scoring and positioning. Could the SNP be stirring things up to make a SNP/Labour coalition more likely? Or is that too cynical?
If the Israelis don’t care about the UK government (and they don’t) why is the UK government always so desperate to back the Israeli government every time there’s a flare up in the region, even though unconditional support for Zionism is a tiny fringe position amongst the electorate, with Jews making up less than 0.5% of the population?
Please remember that Britain has been corrupted by the influence of Russian, Arab and Chinese money, but no-one else has ever tried or succeeded.
One more article like this and Unherd will become Guardian.
I remember the site Areo Magazine, founded by Helen Pluckrose. Just a year later, when Iona Italia became editor, this site converted to the voice of queers.
Yes, Areo Magazine is unreadable now.
This is such a banal comment, we see this kind of thing regularly posted but it is, of course, absolute nonsense.
I can agree with you, Steve, this may be a cliché comment, but for me the evolution of Areo Magazine was truly painful.
The whole point of Unherd is to present a range of views and let its readers discuss them openly and make up their own mind. If you only want articles written be people you agree with you are in the wrong place.
We don’t want a range of views, we only want our own views restated over and over! Are you a member of Hamas ..answer the question! Are you a stooge of Putin? ..answer the question! or I’ll set Piers Morgan on you!
Out of interest, are you?
Sounds like you don’t want diversity of opinion and just right-wing talking points. Not exactly in the spirit of Unherd.
Is there a single right-wing contributor to Unherd, outside of the comments section? This place would be so much more interesting and erudite if Charles Stanhope had a weekly column.
The fact that Sir Keir Starmer’s wife is Jewish may be an important factor in his decision not to back any ‘ceasefire’.
Deplorable
Why deplorable?
It’s a complement
Yes, few seem to mention this. His kids have been brought up in theJewish faith too. So a lot of what has been written in the article may be true. Because of this he will, rightly, not support a cease fire.
Another reason, if one were needed, to explain why the Extreme Left favour HAMAS – because the USA favours Israel. Politics makes some strange bedfellows etc.
Say what you want to about Keir Starmer, but at least he’s not a socialist.
No, he’s a Blairite. Which is worse.
I can hardly believe I am about to defend the dismal Kier Starmer 😀
He opposes a ceasefire because as ghastly as he is, at least he is not a Jew-hating supporter of a terrorist organisation that massacred 1,400 mostly civilian Jews on Oct 7th. Hamas has to be utterly destroyed by military means, and only a moral deranged person can fail to understand why.
Kier Starmer gets that.
The fact that Sir Keir Starmer’s wife is Jewish may be an important factor in his decision not to back any ‘ceasefire’.
What is grimly amusing about Starmer’s plight is that none of this – what the party votes on, what he eventually does if and when he becomes PM – will have the slightest impact upon the reality in the Middle East. I’m happy he is losing slews of his key voters, because that might split the Labour vote. But the issue is about as relevant as that of Gulliver’s Big Endians and Little Endians.
Obviously Hamas are getting trashed, otherwise there would be no calls for a ceasefire.
I think the answer to why he is opposing a ceasefire can be seen in the weapons and computer contents discovered in the main hospital. Also, Hamas has never offered to return the hostages and until it does so, we should keep up the pressure.
What is the point in Labour’s vile anti-Semitic rump pushing the rest of the party to demand a ceasefire.
The Israelis – quite rightly – neither ask nor care what the Labour party thinks.
Sure, it is instructive to the rest of us UK voters to learn that a third of Labour supports Hamas (the vile terrorist group who just last month beheaded infants, committed mass sexual assault and murdered 1,400 innocent people, and kidnapped 240 others for more leisurely diversion in a single day). But Israel doesn’t care what Labour wants and nor should it.
They should vote on the question of whether they think..’War is bad.’
Israel is at war. This isn’t some Christmas Day ceasefire in the trenches before the flower of Europe is scythed down a la Blackadder. I have no truck with.Netanyahu. But Israel’s right to.exist and defend itself gets my suppprt. And before we go.down the colonisation/1948 route, jews founded the.ancient.land of Judah in the bronze/esrly iron age. The.Levant has.pasaed through many hands over millennia.
As for the anti-semitism currently.on full display in our.coumtry? I am ashamed. If we cannot stand in solidariry with defending our fellow citizens.against death threats we are lost. But i have personally thought we were lost some time ago. In my view the demise can be tracked back to smartphones and SM.
Here we have the hard left making disguised criticism of Starmer’s refusal to call for a meaningless ‘ceasefire’. Meaningless because Hamas have made it clear that they have no intention of ceasing their attacks. The hard left don’t want a ‘ceasefire’; they want Israel to stop and return to the status quo.
I thought it was Hamas’s job to attack hospitals?
https://www.hrw.org/news/2007/06/12/gaza-armed-palestinian-groups-commit-grave-crimes
I disagree. Sir Keir maybe the last leader who has this luxury and turn it down. His main insight may in fact be this actually, as Labour leader. I can’t see a future for UK atm other than as a vassal for US. The City seems to be slowly dying with business moving to NYK, property boom coming to an end, no hope for manifacturing, Brexit taking away any other service opportunities with EU- what’s left to do? You can’t run a country on language schools, tourism, and insurance. The few bright spots in UK (military, tech, higher edu) are alive mainly thanks to the close links with the hegemon.
Having read through most of the comments it strikes me that the vast majority of readers seem to think this is a war of two opposing armies whereas it’s no such thing.. the two sides consist of the 4th most powerful army in the world vs unarmed women and children. Since when is that a war?
The enemy of the IDF is supposed to be Hamas but they are not involved at all! They were of course involved in the Oct 7th attacks as was the IDF but now 100% of the Hamas fighters are underground. I repeat: are not involved.
There are a few exceptions of course: the odd Hamas fighter does emerge from underground to snipe at IDF troops now within Gazan territory but those are of minimal consequence as far as the use of bombs, shells, missiles and even bullets are concerned. They are, to all intents and purposes irrelevant amounting to no more than an occasional skirmish here and there.
What the ceasefire is about is a cessation of an entirely unrelated massacre, war crimes and crimes against humanity.
If the majority of UH readers cannot tell the difference between the two it’s less a case of inhumanity, hatred and bloodlust and more a case of rank stupidity.
Well said. I’ve no qualms with Israel’s right to defend itself, but I cannot trust the IDF in Gaza any more than the Americans in Iraq – and we know what happened there.
This is not a war. It’s shooting fish in a barrel with civilians as collateral damage. It can’t be ok to do this without any accountability or oversight when clearly civilians are at risk and dying.
I’m curious: how many British MPs voted against calling for a stop to the Jewish extermination during WW2? (for comparison purposes) simply because the motion failed to condemn the Jewish terrorists who burned down the Reichstadt in what was a clear act of Midieval barbarism?
It turns out now that much of the alleged barbarism of Oct 7 was also lies, fakery and even inflicted by the degenerate IDF applying the Hannibal directive; so the comparison is, I submit, valid to some extent at least.
I’m not occupying any high moral ground here: my own uncle (by marriage) was Ireland’s ambassador to Germany and spent the war in Berlin, no doubt attending lots of parties while innocent Jews were being gassed and cremated.
I wonder if the votes effectively promoting the continued slaughter of innocent Gazans will be remembered for a long time.. “Yes, my son, we not only told Israel to continue with the evil massacre but we supplied the weapons as well!” ..nice legacy!
The Irish government was not quite as bad as we had no murder weapons to supply but it did indeed vote in favour of ethnic cleansing as our pathetic, vassal state leaders followed US instructions.. not for too long more though, God willing as they will soon be out of power!
Do you believe all the nonsense you read online, or is it just the anti-semitic stuff?
I am surprised there has been no mention of Operation Susannah (oka the Lavon affair) with all that has been going on
Israel recruit 10 Egyptian Jewish citizens, trained them in terrorist skills and then in 1954 dispatched them to plant bombs inside Egyptian, American, and British-owned civilian targets including cinemas, libraries, and American educational centres in Egypt. The intention was that the attacks would be blamed on the Muslim Brotherhood, Egyptian communists, “unspecified malcontents”, or “local nationalists” with the aim of “undermining Western confidence in the existing Egyptian regime by generating public insecurity and actions to bring about arrests, demonstrations, and acts of revenge”.
After attacks on a US library and a British owned theatre, the plot was uncovered and the terrorists arrested. Two committed suicide, two were hanged and the rest were jailed.
The Israeli authorities immediately denounced the arrests as an Egyptian frame-up, a position that they maintained for many years before eventually honouring the surviving terrorists in 2005.
No doubt many of the Unherd commentators will in knee-jerk fashion dismiss this as lies. Any that check the facts will say but it is different.
But you or recruit and train terrorists to attack the asset of your allies in a third country with the intention of causing unrest and violence which you expect will be blamed on your putative enemies.
Why should we believe you now?
Just to say, Liam, that I admire your resilience in combatting all the pro-Zionist ranting here. Anyone who dares to mention the horrific treatment of Palestinians by Israel – which is the perfect recipe for desperation and resistance- is insulted and disparaged. The rage underpinning many of these comments is evidence of their racist toxicity. These people care nothing for Arab lives. The more babies and women are killed, the happier they are. Thankfully, public opinion shows that most people do care and they want peace, a diplomatic solution and an end to these war crimes.
1