How the war in Gaza is dividing the UK

The Spectator asked me to write this morning about the meaning of the huge revolt of Labour MPs against Keir Starmer’s pro-Israel position. The commission helped crystallise my thinking. For a long time, I have been wondering how a centre-left party can run a foreign policy that goes against Muslim opinion and hope to keep Muslim votes. I do not believe it can. Voters want politicians who represent their views. You can’t blame them for that.

The former BBC journalist Andrew Marr made the point well this morning when he said he could see the Labour party splitting one day as the French Socialist party split. There would a Corbynite far left party in the mould of Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s La France Insoumise, which could no more bring itself to criticise Hamas than Corbyn could bring himself to call Hamas a terrorist organisation

It would never build a coalition wide enough to win an election. There would be a Macron-style centrist party, that would be in power most of the time,  and a far-right anti-immigrant, nationalist party in the Marine le Pen mode, which might just win.

I plan to write at the weekend about how le Pennist the Tory right is becoming. Before I do, here is where I think the Labour Party stands today.

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What the ceasefire vote means for the future of the Labour party

It’s a little too easy to dismiss the huge Labour rebellion on the Israel-Hamas war last night as ‘virtue signalling’. No one can deny that politicians were striking poses. A party, not in government, tearing itself apart about a conflict that does not involve the UK, over policy recommendations which all the combatants will ignore, in the unlikely event that they care enough about the British Labour party to even notice the vote in the first place. 

In an interview that makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand on end, Ghazi Hamad, a senior Hamas member, praised the massacre of Israeli civilians on October 7, and vowed that his forces would massacre again and again because Israel ‘must be finished’. There’s little hope of him listening to calls for peace. 

Meanwhile the Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected a ceasefire four days ago unless Hamas released all hostages, and has repeatedly vowed to press on until Israel has destroyed its enemies. Once again, not much chance of him listening to the Labour left. 

Sophisticated sneering, however, misses the point. Labour convulsions about Hamas unintentionally reveal western weakness and tell us a great deal about what our next government will look like.