Parliament squabble over Gaza shows Britain's global decline

While British politicians were hurling abuse at one another over the rights and wrongs of parliamentary procedure, diplomats from the US, Israel, Qatar, and other regional players — those with real influence over the fighting — were meeting in neighbouring Paris to explore ceasefire options.

In contrast, Britain appeared both inward-looking and somewhat irrelevant to the very issue it was debating.

A symbolic debate

The Gaza war has disrupted British politics.

Before Hamas' October 7 attack and Israel's reprisals, Labour enjoyed a commanding lead over the Conservatives, and their victory at the next general election seemed a given.

The polls remain unchanged, and Starmer appears destined to be the next occupant of 10 Downing Street, but his authority and popularity have been hit by the fallout of the Middle Eastern conflict.

Dozens of Labour local government councillors have resigned over Starmer's perceived pro-Israel stance. Senior Labour figures, including the mayors of London and Manchester, Sadiq Khan and Andy Burnham, and the Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar, have criticised their leader's position.

And 56 of Starmer's own MPs defied him to vote for the SNP's (ultimately unsuccessful) first ceasefire motion in November, while ten of the Labour front bench team resigned to join them.

Read more: Will Israel's war on Gaza impact the outcome of the upcoming UK elections?

Labour strategists are not fearful Starmer's stance will cost them victory at the election, but there is worry that key constituents will abandon Labour.

Left-wing activists and Muslim voters, who are both generally pro-Palestinian, may be especially deterred.

While this is unlikely to block Starmer's route to Number 10, it could reduce his majority in an election and prove a source of embarrassment should these traditional Labour stalwarts stay away.   

A second effect of the Gaza conflict has been a surge in both antisemitism and Islamophobia in British society.

In February, the Community Security Trust (CST), a charity recording antisemitic incidents across the UK, said 4,103 attacks had occurred targeting members of the Jewish community in 2023.

Two-thirds of these occurred after Hamas' 7 October attack on Israel — a nearly six-fold increase in cases compared to the equivalent period in 2022.

Meanwhile, Tell Mama, another charity, documented 2,010 Islamophobic incidents between 7 October and 7 February —a dramatic rise from the 600 recorded for the same period the previous year.

A third impact of the war on UK politics has been a rise in protests against MPs who have refused to call for a ceasefire.

Pro-Palestinian protestors sprayed the word 'murderer' over Labour frontbencher Jo Stevens' office in Cardiff, while fellow Labour MP Rushamara Ali saw her East London office surrounded by chanting activists.

Both MPs had declined to vote for the SNP's ceasefire motion in November. Some MPs have even been confronted at their homes, and Sky News has alleged some have received death threats.

But Ben Jamal, director of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, says this allegation is a "grotesque conflation" aimed at discrediting peaceful protests calling for a ceasefire.

"What's going on at the moment is the attempt to use those sorts of threats to MPs, which should be managed through proper security processes, to conflate that with legitimate and peaceful protest, and to suggest that somehow people protesting peacefully, including outside MPs offices, including outside Parliament, somehow carries with it a security risk."

In fact, Parliamentary Speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle cited these alleged death threats as his reason to defy the convention by allowing Labour to amend the SNP's motion.

Indeed, when heckled by furious Government and SNP MPs, Hoyle apologised for the breach of convention and said he hoped that allowing Labour MPs to vote for Starmer's diluted 'humanitarian' ceasefire might diminish further Gaza-related protest.

However, it also spared Starmer's blushes and was perceived as a pro-Labour move from Hoyle, who, though formerly a Labour MP, is supposed to be neutral as Speaker.

The eruption of anger by the Conservatives and SNP was perhaps understandable, given they had been deprived of a rare moment to skewer Starmer and exploit one of his few weaknesses.

But their shouts, squabbles and barracking in the parliamentary chamber lost sight of the matter being discussed.

As David Allen Green wrote the next day in Prospect Magazine, "What could and should have been a solemn debate converted into an ugly political debate about procedure."

Gaza policy

The irony of the passions on display in parliament and the wider protests relating to the conflict is that the UK's influence on the conflict has been negligible so far.

Indeed, largely absent from the parliamentary debate is whether it would make any difference to events in Gaza were London to push for the ceasefire, humanitarian or otherwise, that MPs were urging. 

Curious evolution

Britain's position on Gaza has evolved curiously in the last five months.

Initially, London declared itself firmly behind Israel in its determination to crush Hamas in response to the 7 October attacks. Barely a week later, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak was in Israel, emphasising his support for Israeli Premier Benjamin Netanyahu and his right to 'self-defence.'

Since then, the UK has joined the US in launching attacks on Houthi rebels in Yemen, targeting Red Sea shipping in response to the war.   

Yet recently, with Sunak facing mounting problems at home, he appears to have outsourced foreign policy in general and the UK's response to Gaza in particular to his new Foreign Secretary: former Prime Minister David Cameron.

Cameron's approach has been more nuanced.

While sticking to Sunak's line that Israel's assault is just and opposing the SNP (and Labour's) call for ceasefires, Cameron has been willing to publicly criticise Netanyahu.

He told the House of Lords that he had 'personally' challenged the Israeli government over the conduct of its assault.

He likewise echoed the White House in announcing sanctions on four "extremist" Israeli settlers accused of committing human rights violations against Palestinian communities in the West Bank.

Read more: Israel-Hamas war creates challenges for Britain

Most dramatically, in February, Cameron told reporters the UK could officially recognise a Palestinian state even without waiting for any Israeli-Palestinian talks to be successful.

This was a major shift in UK policy and was seen by most as an attempt by London to pressure Israel to re-engage with the two-state solution — something Netanyahu has thus far refused. 

Some, such as Cameron's former national security adviser Peter Ricketts, believe this departure serves to position the UK as an outrider for the US.

Rickett's told The Guardian, "I suspect it's quite helpful to (the US secretary of state) Antony Blinken and he probably doesn't feel he can go that far himself, but he's quite happy that Cameron should be staking that position out." 

Diminished power

A less generous reading, however, is that Cameron has few other options available to him to influence the conflict, given Britain's limited leverage.

Despite having a deep and historical relationship with both Israelis and Palestinians, given its colonial past, the UK has found it difficult to affect the Gaza crisis since it erupted.

Read more: Europe begins to face colonial legacy, but not in the Middle East

This partly boils down to the geopolitics of the conflict. Israel is so closely backed by the US that it is only really Washington, if anyone, that might stay Netanyahu's hand and press for de-escalation.

Even then, President Joe Biden has evidently found it difficult to get the Israeli premier to cooperate.

Partly, though, this is the result of Britain's own changing global position. Since leaving the European Union, the UK's influence has diminished.

Where once it was able — alongside France and Germany, effectively — to direct EU foreign policy on major crises like Gaza, today it is a lone voice on the outside.

Notably, ceasefire talks for Gaza are being held in Paris, with no one even suggesting that London might have been an alternative venue.

Brexit has also made London cling ever more tightly to its alliance with the US, conscious that a close relationship with Washington is the best route to enhanced global influence now its ties with Brussels have weakened.

While Cameron may have shown some daylight between the UK and US positions on Gaza, the need to sustain the 'special relationship' prevents London from offering significant policy deviations from the White House. He will likely still follow Washington's lead in most major areas of conflict.

Then, there is the domestic situation for Britain's Conservative government.  With Sunak clearly under huge pressure and likely to lose the next election, Britain's international clout is further weakened.

Even were he to want to break with the US and call for the ceasefire the SNP called for, and there is no evidence that he does, he lacks the credibility to gain much traction in Washington or elsewhere.

Many already view Sunak as a lame duck premier and few will be persuaded by him.

Read more: The Palestinian state: When good intentions aren't good enough

Cameron's declarations on recognising a Palestinian state, then, might best be interpreted more as a talented diplomat making the most of a very limited hand rather than a sign that Britain is about to take bold new 'outrider' positions on the Gaza crisis in general.

A warning to Labour

The limitations facing Sunak and Cameron should serve as a warning to Labour and its supporters who hope that, if Starmer wins the next election, he'll be more active globally and — specifically on the Middle East and Gaza.

Were Starmer to win the landslide he's forecasted to, he'll at least enjoy more international credibility than Sunak, but he'll still find a diminished post-Brexit Britain that is compelled to stay close to the US on Gaza and other issues.

Moreover, Britain will not suddenly develop more leverage over Israel, the Palestinians or the Middle East in general just because it has a new government. 

If anything, the Gaza crisis has exposed how this corner of the Middle East is a particularly sensitive issue for the Labour Party, hence Starmer's reluctance to wade into the conflict with bold statements and actions.

The SNP, leftist activists and general supporters of Palestinian rights may, understandably, hope that a new government will deliver a more robust approach to the conflict.

However, the structural limits on UK power and Starmer's own political strategy would suggest this is not likely.