Declassified UK: Burnham's foreign policy: Reform or rhetoric?

Posted: 16th July 2026

Burnham’s foreign policy: Reform or rhetoric?

Andy Burnham’s foreign policy direction as the new prime minister needs little speculation.

He was effectively confirmed as the new Labour leader this week after securing more than 85% of MP nominations, leaving no room for a contest.

In the run-up to his inevitable crowning, Burnham has seemed keen to offer a slight change in tone on Gaza, with no new policy commitments, coupled with a commitment to continuing Keir Starmer’s policies on military and foreign policy more generally.

This was most detectable in his initial stance on Gaza, where he said the party “didn’t get it right” and “needs to do better”.

“We’ve got to do more to put pressure on the Israeli government… we must now do more to strengthen our approach”, he added, without saying how.

That memo appears to have been enthusiastically embraced by the rest of the party, which knows it is out of step with majority public opinion.

Senior MPs who embodied Labour’s early unyielding support for Israel’s bombardment of Gaza are also closing ranks behind the new message.

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David Lammy told Radio 4 that Keir Starmer had got the party off to a “bad start” on the issue while in opposition.

Yvette Cooper told the Foreign Affairs Select Committee on Tuesday that the party “should have been faster” to call for a ceasefire.

However, Burnham refused to described the reality on the ground as a genocide, opting instead for the hedging language of Israel’s “military action”.

He suggested further sanctions on Israeli ministers and violent settlers and a potential ban on the trade of goods with illegal settlements.

After nearly three years of genocide, Foreign Office ministers are still only looking at ways to keep illegal settlement goods and services out of the UK but without disrupting other trade with Israel. 

Burnham mentioned nothing about a complete ban on arms sales. No mention of intelligence-sharing with Israel, let alone ending it. Nor of any active measures to properly pivot and hold British nationals who served in the Israeli army to account.

But perhaps the clearest indication came in a new article for The Times, in which Burnham wrote that the “Labour government has proved once again that UK leadership can be a force for good in the world.”

Really? After two years of a Labour government’s complicity in genocide? That is not the message of a prime minister determined to reverse the path of collusion, complicity, and capitulation.

Hamza Yusuf

Regular Contributor
Declassified UK