Jonathan Glass

You can tell a lot from what a politician is ashamed of – and what he’s not. It should have been deeply unsettling for Keir Starmer that Hamas described the Labour government’s plan to recognise a state of Palestine as “one of the fruits of October 7”, but he barely flinched. The prime minister’s grandstanding on Palestinian statehood is more than a distraction from his inability to deliver for the British people. This affair exposes a deeper rot at the heart of government – a political inclination to surrender without shame. Days after Labour’s intervention, Hamas released chilling videos of emaciated hostage Evyatar David, forced to dig his own grave. It was a harsh reminder of the evil and psychological cruelty of Hamas. This is an organisation which holds an innocent 24-year-old man in dark tunnels for 680 days, simply because he is Jewish. While Israel cooperates closely with the UK on counter-terrorism intelligence so that we can be safe from terrorism within our own borders, Starmer rewards the terrorists that hold Israel’s civilians hostage, creating a perverse incentive for Hamas to keep torturing them. None of it makes any sense because Labour’s goal is not to help build a lasting peace, to influence any real prospect of statehood, or to ease the terrible suffering of civilians in Gaza. Instead, their only goal is to appease anti-Israel sentiment in their party and the Islamist groups whose pressure they cannot resist. In the process, they betray Britain’s security interests, and they betray humanity. We all want to see an end to the suffering in Gaza. I’m clear that this requires the eradication of Hamas. The West must not be naïve about terrorism. Hamas is a terror group whose aims are openly genocidal. Hamas live-streamed gruesome videos slaughtering innocent civilians, and it has disrupted the flow of what should be free aid to Palestinians who need it. Yet it is winning the propaganda war in parts of the West. In the face of social and political backlash, it takes courage to do the right thing. Shamefully, Starmer’s position on Palestinian statehood advances the victory of Hamas’s propaganda war. Let us not forget that opportunities for a real two-state solution have been rejected many times before by the Palestinians, from the Peel Commission in the 1930s until the present day. The 1948 Partition Plan was a two-state solution, but it was followed by an invasion from several Arab armies with the express intent to wipe Israel off the map. There can be no two-state solution with Hamas or with any organisation that rejects the existence of a Jewish presence in the Middle East. Rather than acting in the interest of the British people, Starmer’s Labour prides itself on supposedly putting ‘international law’ at the heart of their foreign policy. Yet, 40 eminent lawyers wrote to the Attorney General Lord Hermer setting out why Labour’s legally incoherent plan for recognition could breach international law which governs the establishment of new nations. Revealingly, my successor in the Business and Trade Department, Jonathan Reynolds said those lawyers were “missing the point”. He said that “in the end, recognition of a state is a political judgment”. Finally, an honest answer from Labour. When everyone wondered how it could possibly be the case that Britain was going to surrender sovereign territory in the Chagos Islands, government ministers told us it was because “we could face losing legal rulings.” As China and Iran welcome the Chagos surrender, and British taxpayers prepare to foot the £35 billion surrender tax, the government insists it has no choice but to follow legal advice. And when Labour suspended arms export licences to Israel the Prime Minister insisted it was “a legal decision”. They have been lying to us. As Reynolds’ answer makes clear, on Israel, on Chagos, Labour are making political judgments.