UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s late-life emergence as a politician means that he has been dogged by questions over how politically effective his instincts are.
The devastation of Gaza is something that obviously transcends politics – or at least it should. Yet, as the objective reality of the Palestinians’ suffering is broadcast daily on television sets across the UK, Mr Starmer’s political response to Israel’s war could not be more exposed.
In the 22 months since the outbreak of the conflict, Mr Starmer has been entirely consistent to the extent that he has steadily lost almost the entirety of his supporters for his position. A letter late last week exposed how the Prime Minister had been reduced to playing for time. More than 200 MPs signed a letter calling on the UK to recognise Palestine statehood, as almost 150 nation states have done.
French President Emmanuel Macron has committed his country to declaring its recognition in September at the UN General Assembly annual meeting in New York. A conference this week co-hosted with Saudi Arabia at the UN sees Paris promote the two-state solution with recognition at its heart.
UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy is expected to attend. Yet Mr Starmer has so far withheld the decision to join the French in the new drive to make real recognition for Palestine among the most powerful countries of the G7 bloc.
For weeks, London’s political calculation has been that pressure from the Knesset presented Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with an opportunity to change course. There was also the arrival to Britain of US President Donald Trump, who is holding court on his Scottish golf courses.
These ultra-luxury venues have not only been a sporting paradise for Mr Trump, but also a diplomatic platform for him. On Sunday, he secured a trade deal with EU, which he called the biggest yet. On Monday, Mr Starmer spent the day with him. There, aides said Mr Starmer would use his good standing with the American leader to press his point on Gaza.
The British leader said he was working with Mr Trump to find a way to address the starvation of Gazans. Mr Trump said, for the first time, that the hunger in the Strip was real and couldn’t be faked. “We can work not just on the pressing issues of the ceasefire, but also on this issue of getting humanitarian aid in at volume, at speed,” Mr Starmer said.
The US President said he was pressing Mr Netanyahu to find a different way to bring the plight of the hostages to a resolution. “I’m going to say it’s a very difficult situation,” Mr Trump said. “If they didn’t have the hostages, things would go very quickly, but they do, and we know where they have them, in some cases, and you don’t want to go riding roughshod over that area, because that means those hostages will be killed.”
The reckoning, as the UK House of Commons’ Foreign Affairs Committee put it, was that Mr Netanyahu listens to only one foreign leader: Mr Trump. Even then the Israeli Prime Minister defies Washington, so only a big pep talk from Mr Starmer could get the US leader into a frame of mind to intervene meaningfully.
All that was a calculation rather than a guaranteed outcome. Mr Starmer’s team did not want to alienate Mr Trump by announcing the UK’s recognition in advance of their meeting. Alienating the US President would provide some poor dynamics for the Scotland meetings, something Mr Starmer was not prepared to countenance.
UK Secretary of State for Business and Trade Jonathan Reynolds – the cabinet minister among the closest to Mr Starmer – echoed the judgment that only the US has leverage in the current situation. He pointed out that two temporary ceasefires were brought about by US involvement. Downing Street has said the same thing, although it appears to be ignoring the fact that US envoy Steve Witkoff withdrew from the process last week.
Mr Reynolds was asked repeatedly about the prospect of the Prime Minister caving into political pressure this week. Despite the recess, the cabinet is set to meet for a discussion on Palestine, setting speculation off that a U-turn was coming. In advance of any new approach emerging, Mr Reynolds raised the standing concern from Mr Starmer’s camp that recognition must not be a “tokenistic” exercise. Deploying the decision once should have a tangible impact.
“It is a case of when, not if,” he said. “It’s about how we use this moment, because you can only do it once to have a meaningful breakthrough.”
That line has held sway at Westminster for quite some time. However, not only has the number of MPs in the Labour party rejecting it openly now into the hundreds, but up to half the cabinet are now holding private briefings that this cannot stand.
For most, there is a moral and humanitarian imperative that cannot wait. History, too, is powerful here. As the country that intervened through the Balfour Declaration to endorse Zionism’s project to settle in Palestine, there are many in London who believe that Britain has a historic responsibility to promote equal rights for Palestinians and Israelis.
The Labour government that took power last year was overtly committed to “leading on international law issues”, something that suggested a spirit of rebalancing how the UK developed its policies.
Most remarkably, however, Attorney General Richard Hermer has not developed a response to the International Court of Justice’s provisional measures on the Gaza conflict. Mr Starmer is a distinguished lawyer in this field and if his political skills have come under scrutiny on this issue, then it is a double indictment that his legal expertise appears to have disappeared as well.
There is ultimately no riddle here. Mr Starmer has played for time for so long on this issue that he has utterly run out of road for his position on Palestine.
