Labour Gaza Policy: New Words Cannot Erase the Record
Three years ago in Liverpool, Keir Starmer told LBC that Israel had “that right” to cut off Gaza’s power and water. In Liverpool this week, Ed Miliband told Labour conference that the party’s critics “were right”. A new vocabulary is welcome. It is not an alibi.
Three years ago, at Labour’s conference in Liverpool, Keir Starmer was asked by LBC’s Nick Ferrari whether a siege was appropriate: “Cutting off power, cutting off water?” His answer was plain enough. “I think that Israel does have that right.” His office later said he meant only Israel’s right to self-defence, and Starmer insisted it had never been his view that Israel could withhold water, food, fuel or medicine. But the words were on tape, and the country heard them.
Now Liverpool again, and a different sound entirely. Ed Miliband, Foreign Secretary in Andy Burnham’s government, told conference that the suffering inflicted on Gaza and the West Bank by Netanyahu’s government is “a stain on the conscience of the world”. Then came the line that brought the hall to its feet. To the millions moved and outraged by the plight of the Palestinian people, he said:
“We hear you. You were right.”
Let us be fair, because fairness is the point. What Miliband announced is real. A ban on goods from illegal settlements. A pledge to cut off British finance, construction and services to them. Ministers now openly naming settler ethnic cleansing, the evidence of war crimes in Gaza and Israel’s illegal occupation. No British government has gone this far, and those who marched for three years deserve to see it.
But listen to who is speaking. Miliband was not a lonely voice on the backbenches. He sat on Starmer’s front bench in opposition and at his cabinet table in government, through every month in which the old line held. “You were right” is a generous thing to say to the public. It is also, whether he intends it or not, a verdict on the room he sat in.
If the millions were right, the government they were arguing against was wrong, and the people who served in it owe more than an applause line.
And how were those millions treated while they were being right? The Starmer government proscribed Palestine Action. On the Sunday before Miliband spoke, police arrested around 150 people outside the conference for holding placards that read “I oppose genocide. I support Palestine Action.” One day the state arrests you for your sign. The next, the Foreign Secretary thanks you for your conscience. Both cannot be the settled position of the same party.
The genocide case brought by South Africa remains before the International Court of Justice, and the legal question will be answered there. But the dead do not wait on judgments, and they do not disappear because Labour has found a new vocabulary.
So here is the test, and it is not a test of language. If Labour believes its critics were right, it should review the proscription that is still filling police vans outside its own conference. It should give a full, public account of what ministers knew and decided on arms exports while Gaza was being flattened. And it should stop asking the country to hear the new words and forget the old ones.
Orwell saw this trick long ago.
“The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”
This time the Party is telling you to trust your eyes and ears. Good. Then let it answer for what they said.
