Discussion on UK Political Reactions to Gaza

What's your reaction to what you heard from Andy Burnham today,

because it was clearly quite a slap against what Keir Starmer had been doing.

Yes, very much so.

And I think he understood that he needed to distance himself from Starmer.

One of the reasons why Starmer has been so unpopular over the last two years.

The British media doesn't talk about it as much, Andrew,

in a lot of the political obits I saw for Starmer,

Gaza didn't get mentioned even once.

For example, the BBC's

epic piece about how Starmer failed to connect with the public didn't mention Gaza.

Gaza was a factor.

Two thirds of Labour voters who ditched Labour for the Greens,

according to opinion polling last month,

did so, citing Gaza as a major factor.

We know that Keir Starmer in October 2023

went on LBC and said he has the right to vote. Nick Ferrari, yes.

Do you think he ever recovered from that, do you think? Was that the moment?

I think with a segment of the left, he never did recover.

It was outrageous for a human rights lawyer who was about to become prime

minister to defend Israel's blatant war crimes.

Andy Burnham, interestingly,

at the time, Andrew, as mayor of Manchester, joined Sadiq Khan, mayor of London.

Both of them put out statements calling for a ceasefire very early on.

People didn't notice that Burnham had done it.

Sadiq Khan got a lot of attacks,

maybe because he's Muslim, but he got attacked at the time.

Burnham, no one really noticed that he had done the same thing.

So I noticed at the time and I thought, yeah,

but also I think I'm sorry to jump in.

I think the two of them also very strongly condemned the the original Hamas

attack as well. We've all done that,

and one doesn't necessarily oppose the other.

You can condemn Hamas's attack on October 7th and also say that what Israel did in

response was war crimes, was genocide,

is now currently ethnic cleansing.

And Starmer has lately tried to take a stronger stance,

as have most European governments, but it's been two and a half years of genocide.

You've used the word genocide about four times just now.

Andy Burnham noticeably hasn't used that word and has

already been criticized by many people for that.

In a sense, can he ever go far enough to quiet his critics or

quiet Labour's critics in the Green Party and on the left generally?

It's a very good question, and we shall see is the answer.

I don't know the answer to that question.

I know that I'm very critical of people in politics who won't say genocide when

it's the consensus view almost of genocide scholars, of UN investigators,

human rights groups, Amnesty, Human Rights Watch, Israeli human rights groups.

But look, at the end of the day, I'm looking for progress.

You know, I am somebody who's a pragmatist.

If you get a new prime minister who's better than the old prime minister,

if he's willing to say he's going to put sanctions on Israeli ministers,

he's willing to talk about pressure on the Israeli government.

And look, I would like to see these British governments stop giving

components for F 35 jets.

I would like to see an end to British Israeli military cooperation.

I would like to see a British prime minister who says the word genocide.

We're not going to get there anytime soon, but, you know, it's a good start.

This only happened. It's a move in the right direction.

And the key point, Andrew,

it's only happened because of pressure from the grassroots,

from the Labour Party base. I'm in the U S.

The Democratic Party base has pushed the party.

You've seen the changes here in the U S.

with candidates running for office,

much more critical of Israel than American politicians have ever been.

And we need that pressure to

continue for the sake of human rights for the Palestinians.