What is the problem facing the Labour leader, Keir Starmer?
Keir Starmer’s Labour party is miles ahead of Rishi Sunak’s Conservatives in the polls and, with the UK seemingly crying out for change after 13 years of Tory rule, victory at the next general election seems likely. However, in recent days Starmer has been urged to quit from people within his own party. The immediate source of the discontent has been the Labour leader’s refusal to back calls for a ceasefire in the war between Israel and Hamas.
The calls for Starmer to stand down when on the brink of power will not be heeded. But the outrage voiced by some, including the leader of Burnley borough council, who announced on Monday that he had decided to resign from the party, highlights the tricky task Starmer faces in keeping something close to unity among his electoral coalition on a subject on which his party has a complicated history.
As it stands, the mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, as well as 16 Labour frontbenchers and a third of the parliamentary party, have either called for a ceasefire or shared others’ backing for one on social media. Others, including Labour’s leader in Scotland, Anas Sarwar, have suggested that Starmer has shown a lack of empathy for the cause of Palestinians in Gaza.
What has been Labour’s historical position on Israel and Palestine?
Labour called for a Jewish state in 1917 and 11 party conferences voted in support of a Jewish home in Palestine before the state was established in 1948. Harold Wilson was one of Israeli’s strongest supporters when he was a Labour prime minister in the 1960s and Michael Foot, the leftwing leader of Labour in the early 1980s, had been a campaigner for a Jewish home in Palestine. A party that believed in social justice had to protect a people who had been through the Holocaust, it was argued, and in turn, the party’s support of ethnic minority rights made it the natural home for the Jewish vote in Britain for decades.
There were always other views on Israel and Palestine within Labour but a much more critical stance on the Israeli state appeared to emerge as a result of Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza and then the hardline rightwing approach of the governments of Ariel Sharon and Benjamin Netanyahu. Social justice, it was said, was best pursued through solidarity with the Palestinian people. On the far left, allied with a discomfort at the west’s use of its power and wealth, there was also the belief that Israel was a colonial creation. For some, these positions erred into a tolerance under Jeremy Corbyn of those who held antisemitic views, an allegation firmly denied by the former leader.
What is the Labour leader’s current position?
Starmer has argued that a ceasefire in the current war would simply freeze the status quo and that Hamas’s murder of 1,400 people on 7 October, and the group’s stated intention to strike again and again, makes this untenable. Israel must, the argument goes, be allowed to defend itself. Starmer has followed the White House in calling for humanitarian pauses to allow aid to get into Gaza. It may be an unsatisfactory argument to some but it has a logic. Labour backs a two-state solution for Israel and Palestine but the immediate threat to life needs to be dealt with.
There is a suspicion in some parts of Labour, however, that Starmer has been led to this position by a desire to draw a line between him and his predecessor, Corbyn, who was recorded in 2009 describing Hamas and Hezbollah representatives as “friends”. Corbyn has spoken of his regret at that “inclusive” but inappropriate language, but in doing so he has argued that the way to peace will inevitably require all the warring parties to be brought together, and that there is no military solution. That argument also has a logic. It is posited that a two-state solution will not be furthered by the stirring up of more hate through the deaths of thousands of civilians in Gaza by the Israel Defence Forces.
The problem for Labour is that the proponents of these two positions tend to see those of a dissenting view as failing to live up to the party’s purpose of promoting social justice. It is also the case that most of the far left of the party, who are blamed by the rest of the party for making Labour unelectable in the 1980s and in more recent years, support a ceasefire. A further complication is that the Muslim vote is important in a number of Labour constituencies. Starmer’s position is seen by some as an electoral risk.
There is no easy solution. Starmer has made some missteps, including when he appeared to support the cutting of water and energy to Gaza in an interview with LBC. He later clarified that this was not his position but it has made it all the harder for him to convince the totality of his party that his stance is truly that of a politician who believes in social justice – and that’s the crux of the problem.