David Cameron, Theresa May, Boris Johnson, Liz Truss, Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer have all resigned as prime minister of the United Kingdom since the Brexit Referendum in June 2016. These 10 years have been a period of profound instability and a rise in populism on both the Left and the Right.
For British Jews, these have not been good times. The hope is that Andy Burnham will prove more successful than his six predecessors when he most likely moves into 10 Downing Street. He will succeed Ramsay MacDonald, Clement Attlee, Harold Wilson, James Callaghan, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown as a Labour prime minister during a century saturated by Tories.
Labour prime ministers have historically had strong links with Israel and the Jewish community. MacDonald visited the Yishuv, the Jewish settlement in Palestine, as early as 1922, while Harold Wilson sent his son to stay at Kibbutz Yagur. Blair is a member of Trump’s Board of Peace, while Gordon Brown’s father was a Church of Scotland minister who learned Hebrew and led many visits of his parishioners to Israel. Brown and former Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks were close friends.
However, an admiring Labour was in power in the past when a different Israel existed, fuelled by the endeavours of “the New Jew” – to build and be built. Such idealism for Zion is a rarity in the Labour Party of 2026.
The settlement drive after the Six Day War in 1967 and the election of the Likud a decade later presented organisations such as the Labour Friends of Israel in the UK with an increasingly uphill task. The principle of creating a new society, which the founders of the state envisaged, was gradually abandoned. The individual took precedence over the collective. The New Jew was replaced by the Old Jew.
Since the election of the current Israeli government in 2022, Netanyahu and his allies have quenched any residual enthusiasm for the Zionist experiment in the British Labour party. Instead, there has been a self-righteous certainty that they alone are the guardians of the truth.
Keir Starmer attempted to buck this trend. Like many in Labour, he was aghast at the murders of October 7, 2023 and the taking of hostages. He told local radio in London that Israel “has the right to do everything it can to get those hostages back safe and sound. Hamas bears responsibility”. But, like many in Labour, he became increasingly uneasy at Netanyahu’s response to the situation, where the priority was to destroy Hamas and proclaim “final victory” rather than rescue the hostages.
Starmer’s broad position was to criticise the government of Israel but to strongly support the state of Israel. Even so, he was undoubtedly under pressure from within Labour ranks to condemn Netanyahu’s policies. Moreover, British Muslims were abandoning Labour in droves and had even elected a handful of independent MPs during the 2024 election. The issue of Gaza also increased support for the Greens on Labour’s Left.
Whereas Starmer had initially rebuffed calls for a ceasefire, he ended up being appalled at the plight of ordinary people in Gaza and called for “a sustainable peace”.
Along with other Western countries and many Diaspora Jewish communities, Labour had always recognised the two-state solution as the vehicle to resolve the conflict. Starmer’s government finally recognised a state of Palestine – albeit with caveats. This was a principle which former Israeli prime minister Shimon Peres had advocated as far back as 1997.
Andy Burnham, like Starmer, operates within the parameters of British Labour’s approach to the Israel-Palestine imbroglio. Even so, there is a sense that Burnham is just going through the motions and doing what is necessary to not cause problems.
Burnham is a member of the Labour Friends of Israel, but he visited the West Bank in 2012 with pro-Palestinian politicians. This was viewed as Burnham’s attempt to be seen to be non-partisan and even-handed. A decade ago, he told the Palestine Solidarity Campaign in the UK that recognition of Palestine should be viewed “not as a means of bypassing the need for talks, but as a bridge for restarting them”. He argued then that the international community should take concrete steps to strengthen moderate Palestinian opinion. Following its defeat in 2010, Labour urged the Cameron government to support the Palestinian Authority’s bid for recognition at the UN.
In 2015 when he was standing to become leader of the Labour Party, Burnham condemned BDS – the boycott of, divestment from and sanction on Israel – as “spiteful”. He even proclaimed then that if elected, his first foreign visit as leader would be to Israel.
Burnham stated then that he believes an expansion of West Bank settlements is an obstacle to any eventual peace. He was also critical of the practice of labelling products made in the settlements as “Produce of Israel” – and called for transparency.
Burnham’s position has therefore always been centrist in accordance with Labour’s official line. While he has been outside parliament for the past decade as the successful Mayor of Greater Manchester, his view on Israel has moved as Labour’s view on Netanyahu’s actions became more explicit, as Israel itself changed.
During the Obama presidency, Netanyahu appeared to embrace a two-state solution. “In my vision of peace, in this small land of ours, two peoples live freely, side by side, in amity and mutual respect … Each will have its own flag, its own national anthem, its own government. Neither will threaten the security or survival of the other,” he said in a speech at Bar-Ilan University on June 14, 2010. He even agreed to a temporary settlement freeze.
By the Israeli election in 2015 and the end of Obama’s tenure in the White House, Netanyahu began to oppose the notion of a Palestinian state or any Israeli withdrawal from territory. He argued that anything else would mean yielding to “radical Islamic terrorist attacks against Israel”.
The unexpected election of Donald Trump surpassed Netanyahu’s wildest political dreams and he now had free rein to carry out his ideological convictions.
Burnham and the British Labour Party strongly reacted to this development in Israel and especially to Netanyahu’s appeasement of the far right.
Even so, Burnham has been moderate in his responses. He has refused to define Israel’s military’s actions against Hamas in Gaza as a genocide and recently commented, “I can’t judge things of that enormity from where I am as Mayor of Greater Manchester. But I do have concerns about the disproportionate nature of what has happened in terms of the destruction, and there has to be a full process of investigation and accountability.” (The Guardian, June 4 2026)
Burnham therefore offers crumbs of comfort to both sides. This broadly reflects the opinion of the British public as one of distance from both Israelis and Palestinians. According to opinion polls over many years, it has been one of “a plague on both your houses”. However, during the period of the current Netanyahu government, opinion polls now evince a greater sympathy for the Palestinians than for the Israelis.
Burnham agreed with Jeremy Corbyn’s expulsion from Labour, after a report by the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) concluded that Labour under his leadership had unlawfully harassed and discriminated against Jewish members.
However, Burnham clearly wishes to unify a disparate and disillusioned party. He wishes to stem the leakage to the Greens, and this may involve a tighter embrace of the Palestinian cause. It remains to be seen if a provocative action by Netanyahu in the run-up to the Israeli election will provide Burnham with an opportunity.
Jewish Independent 24 June 2026