Last Monday, Andy Burnham “kissed hands” with King Charles and became the fourth prime minister in the king’s short reign – and the fourth prime minister in as many years. Burnham sees his task as the rebuilding of the UK after a decade of instability following Brexit – to provide “a circuit breaker” in the periodic replacement of British leaders. If promises are to be believed, Burnham’s ascendency means a decentralisation of power and an implicit rolling back of the trickle-down philosophy of Thatcherism.
Burnham appointed Ed Miliband as his Foreign Secretary – probably as a means of avoiding his appointment as Chancellor of the Exchequer. Miliband is Jewish and on the Left of the Labour Party. He is also the scion of a distinguished political family. He challenged his brother David for the Labour leadership in 2010 – and surprisingly defeated him with the help of the trade unions.
The subsequent bad blood between them after this event was also coloured by a perception that David was more interested in Israel than his brother. On his appointment on Monday, Ed Miliband released a statement which characterised himself more as a Jewish Briton than as a British Jew:
“My parents came to Britain as Jewish refugees from the Nazis. To them, Britain was both a sanctuary and a beacon of hope in the global fight against fascism. I will carry my parents’ faith in that spirit of Britain to my role representing our country.”
His father, Ralph Miliband, was a renowned socialist academic at the London School of Economics – and a member of the Marxist-Zionist Hashomer Hatzair in his youth before fleeing to the UK on the last boat out of Belgium in May 1940 in order to escape the Nazi advance.
Miliband was one of a coterie of young Jewish intellectuals whose families had left Poland for Belgium in the 1920s. They were trying to understand why Satan had descended upon Europe in the 1930s and threatened them as Jews. Some flirted with Zionism, others rejected it as an irrelevance in the Europe of 1940. Many ended their lives at Auschwitz.
While Ralph Miliband appeared to be totally uninterested in the odyssey of Israel in the decades after its founding, he reacted strongly during the Six-Day war, describing President Nasser’s regime in Egypt as “a semi-military, bureaucratic dictatorship” assisted by “former Gestapo officials”. He later argued that the views of the early Communists about Zionism were now out of date with the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948.
Years later, Miliband’s son, Ed – the then leader of the Labour Party – seemed to reflect his father’s views in rejecting the superficial views of the far Left. Ed opposed BDS, but argued for recognising a state of Palestine some 10 years before Keir Starmer actually did so. In his first statement about the conflict after he was appointed as Foreign Secretary, Ed Miliband said that he would work towards “a sustainable peace between Israel and Palestine”.
While both Burnham and Miliband will uncompromisingly combat antisemitism, it is also likely that there will be a lack of trust in any future Israeli government. Netanyahu’s legacy will not be washed away overnight.
The traditional British approach of a two-state solution will certainly continue, but there has definitely been an increase in sympathy for the Palestinian cause in the UK. In parallel, surveys indicate a dramatic drop in pro-Israeli sentiment following the Gaza war.
Miliband’s appointment also comes at a time when social democratic parties globally are becoming increasingly critical of Netanyahu’s government and its policies, amidst an unspoken disillusionment with Israel per se. It is a disillusionment that often does not differentiate between the state of Israel and the government of Israel. What began on the far Left in the 1960s has now reached mainstream social democratic parties in the 21st century.
Last week, Belgium became the fourth European country to impose an import ban on produce from Israeli settlements. Spain was first in September 2025, followed by the Netherlands and Ireland. It has been Belgian social democrats and centrists who have campaigned for this ban rather than the Greens and the far Left.
This coincided with the recent vote of 103 House Democrats in the US – almost half of the caucus – in support of an amendment to eliminate all US military aid to Israel. Another 10 representatives abstained. This included many of “Israel’s friends”, such as Nancy Pelosi, the former Speaker of the House. The normative behaviour of the Democrats vanished in the haze. The blank cheque of US$4 billion in aid to Israel each year is now being questioned by its hitherto strongest allies. The rise of progressive Democrats has also forced incumbent loyalists to adopt a more critical stand.
A Pew Research Center poll in March suggested that today 84 per cent of “Young Democrats” see Israel in an unfavourable light compared to 62 per cent in 2022.
There has also been disaffection with AIPAC (America-Israel Public Affairs Committee), the major lobbying group in Congress and government. During the past couple of years, it has mimicked Trump-like tactics, promoting confrontation and aggression, even amongst Democrat friends who have reservations about Israeli policy. Some politicians now publicly refuse to accept donations from AIPAC.
According to files submitted under the US Foreign Agents Registration Act, the Netanyahu coalition has spent US$100 million to refurbish its image. Netanyahu still believes that “hasbara”, operated by smooth influencers, social media devotees and crude propagandists, is the panacea that will cure all problems. Many Diaspora Jews, however, now believe that it is a totally bankrupt policy, which has failed the people of Israel.
It is never the actual policies that are questioned by the propagandists, but only the spin that is given to interpreting events and episodes. However, public reality is not the same as public relations.
This is the 24-hour media world that Andy Burnham and Ed Miliband now inhabit. It is also a world where Jewish organisations and pro-Israel groups dwell. While there is a private hope that Netanyahu will be put out to pasture in October’s election, there is no guarantee that the damage his coalition has caused can easily be repaired.
The failure by Jewish organisations to distinguish between the state and the government over many years has been costly. Many religious organisations and many orthodox rabbis embraced silence as a policy – as if Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich were no different from Meir Bar-Ilan in representing religious Zionism. Consensus was preserved, but ethics and morality were ditched.
Despite the shape of things looking decidedly difficult for those Diaspora Jews who identify with Israel, there is always the Jewish impetus to be positive and to look towards a better future. 2026 may well be the year when the green shoots of change first appear from the barren political soil in both the US and Israel.
Jewish Independent 23 July 2026