Andy Burnham will already know, for certain, that his predecessor will face his death, in due course, knowing that he was personally complicit in Israel’s genocide in Gaza. A genocide systematically planned and ruthlessly executed.
Which begs the question: how long does Andy Burnham have to avoid the same fate himself? It’s just a little over eight weeks before the Labour Party conference in Liverpool. Time enough, one must hope, both for him to weigh up conflicting views, and then to exercise his already much-quoted quality of empathy when contemplating the unfathomable suffering of the Palestinian people. So far, all he’s done is to describe images from Gaza as “a scar on our collective conscience”.
You may feel it’s ill-judged to personalise such complex issues in such a direct, ad hominem way. But what else can we ask of politicians who purport to provide moral leadership at a time of such unprecedented crisis? It’s true – by extension – that every single member of Starmer’s cabinet (and – by further extension – every single member of Burnham’s cabinet) will go to their death fully cognisant of their own individual complicity in this genocide. But, for now, the focus is firmly on Andy Burnham himself.
His response, so far, to the ongoing genocide has been wholly inadequate and morally craven. His apology for the Labour government (“we didn’t get it right”) when Israel invaded Gaza in late October 2023 (in response to the heinous attack by Hamas on Israel on October the 7th) was a veiled attack on Keir Starmer, who had aggressively supported Israel’s right to cut off the population of Gaza from food and water — in the process condoning a war crime for which both Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant (Israel’s former Defence Minister) have been indicted by the International Criminal Court.
In effect, this was a cynically calibrated way of distancing himself from his predecessor.
But he will now have no further dispensation in terms of facing the same moral dilemma that Starmer did. The ruling from the International Court of Justice in January 2024 that there was, even then, ‘a plausible risk of genocide’, and that every signatory to the Geneva Convention had from that point on ‘an absolute obligation to take all steps to prevent such a genocide’, demands an explicit response.
This is a massive challenge for Burnham. Whilst unequivocally continuing to condemn all anti-semitism, and the current wave of deadly violence against British Jews, this is what he will need to do to ensure that the UK finally positions itself on the right side of this grim historical abomination.
- He must explicitly recognise that what has happened in Gaza (and is still happening) is a genocide, guided by the International Association of Genocide Scholars’ confirmation that it meets the legal definition of genocide (as laid out in the UN Convention on Genocide).
- In light of that, he must immediately back comprehensive trade sanctions against Israel, and ban all future arms sales.
- He must instruct the Home Secretary to de-proscribe Palestine Action and move to have all charges against supporters of Palestine Action dropped.
- He must demand that Israel withdraws from Gaza (as agreed in the October 2025 so-called ‘Peace Deal’ – since when more than 1,000 Palestinians have been killed, including more than 300 children).
- He must demand that the borders with Gaza are opened without further delay, allowing food and medical supplies to flow freely, and ensuring that independent journalists are allowed back into Gaza.
- He must bring pressure to bear on Donald Trump’s Board of Peace to ensure that work starts on clearing the millions of tonnes of rubble, and that proper accommodation is provided for the citizens of Gaza before winter conditions make life even worse.
- He must use the UK’s position as a Permanent Member on the UN Security Council to condemn the ongoing war crimes in the West Bank, with illegal Israeli settlers now protected by Israeli Defence Forces seeking to annex as much of the West Bank as it can get away with.
- He must unequivocally defend the role of the International Criminal Court as the USA and Israel do everything they can do destroy it.
If all that sounds absurdly unrealistic, it shows just how far short both the Conservative and Labour governments have fallen, since October 2023, in terms of their basic legal obligations under international law.
Any such move in this direction will of course be fiercely opposed by supporters of the apartheid, Zionist State of Israel, (including the Board of Deputies of British Jews) and indeed, closer to home, by Labour Friends of Israel. The fact that Burnham chose James Purnell, a former Chair of Labour Friends of Israel, to be his chief of staff does not augur well.
Which makes this a test both of Andy Burnham’s political acumen and his fundamental moral character the like of which no incoming Prime Minister has ever had to deal with.
