Declassified UK: The blood will never wash from Keir Starmer’s hands
Posted: 21st May 2025
The blood will never wash from Keir Starmer’s hands
This week, the UK government announced that it would suspend free trade talks with Israel, as David Lammy condemned the “monstrous” situation in Gaza.
A small number of illegal settler organisations and individuals in the West Bank were also sanctioned by the Foreign Office. Those included Daniella Weiss, the settler activist who featured in Louis Theroux’s recent BBC documentary The Settlers.
The first signs of a shift in the Labour government’s tone came on Monday night, when Keir Starmer, French president Emmanuel Macron, and Canadian prime minister Mark Carney issued a joint statement on the Middle East.
“We strongly oppose the expansion of Israel’s military operations in Gaza. The level of human suffering in Gaza is intolerable. Yesterday’s announcement that Israel will allow a basic quantity of food into Gaza is wholly inadequate”, they declared.
The immediate background to these developments was the escalation in Israel’s bombardment, siege, and starvation of Gaza, with the United Nations warning on Tuesday that 14,000 babies could die within 48 hours if aid did not reach them in time.
Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu sought to pre-empt international condemnation over the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza by allowing a minuscule amount of aid into the strip.
“We’re going to take control of all the Gaza strip”, he announced on Monday. “Our best friends in the world – [US] senators I know as strong supporters of Israel – have warned that they cannot support us if images of mass starvation emerge”.
Israeli finance minister Bezalel Smotrich went even further, declaring the same day that humanitarian aid was only being allowed into Gaza “so the world does not stop us and accuse us of war crimes”. The goal, he added, was to “conquer, clear, and stay” in Gaza.
The official calls for a final solution in Gaza, it seems, prompted the UK government to attempt to put some daylight between itself and the Netanyahu regime.
But reading beyond the headlines, it’s clear that Starmer and Lammy are very much as complicit in the Gaza genocide as they were last week.
While the UK-Israel Free Trade Agreement negotiations have been ongoing since 2022, there seemed little prospect of them concluding any time soon. Indeed, Israel’s foreign ministry even declared on Tuesday that “the free trade agreement negotiations were not being advanced at all by the current UK government”.
And then there’s Britain’s ongoing military collaboration with Israel.
The Ministry of Defence informed Declassified on Tuesday that the Royal Air Force (RAF) would continue to send surveillance planes over Gaza to collect intelligence for Israel.
And last week, it was revealed that the Labour government had licensed exports of more military equipment to Israel than the Tories did for all of 2020-2023 combined.
The Labour government’s suspension of trade talks with Israel is too little too late. If international law is to mean anything, Starmer and Lammy should be tried in the Hague.