'Keir Starmer doesn't have the luxury of listening to ceasefire claptrap'
If Jeremy Corbyn was still leader of the Labour Party, he'd have called for a ceasefire in Gaza before Israel had finished counting the bodies of its massacred civilians.
And if he was in charge, the party would right now be having internal rows about why he was "letting Hamas off the hook", MPs would threaten resignations, and the media would be asking if it would cost him vital votes from the public.
Corbyn would also be upsetting international allies, be accused of stoking terror on British streets, and be so far away from power it'd be like trying to explain nuclear fusion to someone from the Stone Age who's idly banging some rocks together And those pictures of him laying wreaths for Palestinian terrorists wouldn't just be on the front pages - this time they'd be on Joe Biden's desk, Putin's, Zelenskyy's, Netanyahu's.
We would be internationally embarrassed about someone who only half-wanted to be the next Prime Minister, and none of it would stop a single bomb or bullet. Gaza would still be flattened; Israel would still be terrorised. No-one wants to vote for someone who's "present but not involved". In politics, if it looks bad it IS bad.
There is no way that laying a wreath for terrorists who killed Israeli Olympic athletes - civilians, in other words - wasn't a bad idea in all possible directions, before, during, and after it was taken (Facebook)At first it looked like Keir Starmer's natural caution was backfiring. That by not criticising the aerial bombardment of children he was taking timidity to the point of moral blindness. He had a bad day in an interview with Nick Ferrari, was forced to issue a clarification, and then faced demands to fix a 50-year-old conflict 1,500 miles away in a 5,000-year-old war zone with a single word. Anyone would be a rabbit in the headlights of that lot, and if you believe there's a perfect way of handling it you probably believe in the tooth fairy, too.
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On the one hand, Starmer is an Opposition leader whose views will make zero difference to any of the killers in question. On the other, he's probably going to be PM in a year and it's only right that he show us his homework. He did so in a speech at Chatham House which was fair, consistent, absolutely right and went widely unnnoticed. It was too sane, and too late, to reverse a slump in his personal poll ratings, which saw him go from +7 points to -5 - not because he wants peace and sees wrongs on all sides, but because he'd made a mess of saying so.
He's still more popular than Sunak, who's got no internal party rows, no Tory councillors calling for him to resign, no media questions about why he's not being a bit more bloody fair. It's almost like the country's given up on the current Prime Minister: we expect him to to show the emotional and intellectual heft of a Ken doll. We demand more of Starmer.
But here he is, a sane and logical man who wants Israel to stop the bombing, to target Hamas and save civilians, and he's got a sizeable chunk of his party agitating for a ceasefire which would leave Hamas intact to fight another day. It's madness, and it's time those who consider themselves progressive, Left-wing and liberal took a long hard look at who they're walking alongside.
Last weekend's objectively-confusing 'peace' march on Westminster Bridge (Guy Bell/REX/Shutterstock)In the marches filled by people calling for peace are agitators organised and paid by the mullahs of Iran, which wants a war with Israel to divert attention from the fact it's been murdering women for the crime of having hair on their heads. At the sit-in at Liverpool Street Station were people whose public statements imply support for the massacre of October 7, by saying the "violence of the oppressed must never be equated with that of the oppressor". Er, if they're both killing babies, I'll equate them all I like.
And anyone who thinks Israel is in someone else's house needs to have a long hard look at the history books. That bit of rock is the Jewish homeland, it's never had a functioning Arab state in the same place, and it's been invaded and occupied by caliphs, emirs, Romans, the British Empire and just about everyone else for millennia. There is a long-term human tragedy in the Holy Land, and you cannot fix it by asking people to be a bit nicer.
Hamas runs the Gaza Strip because it was elected at the point of a gun in 2006 and then never held another vote. They don't want a 'Free Palestine' - they want a theocracy run on the same lines as ISIS, with gays thrown off buildings, adulterers stoned to death, and a constant war against Jews. They are not about to have a nice new democracy, educate children properly, or send a transgender act to Eurovision.
That's no reason not to call for peace. But it should be a damned good reason to insist that, just like ISIS, like the mullahs, like dictators and religious lunatics everywhere, Hamas should never, ever, get what it wants.
Dana International was and is one of the reasons why Islamist hardliners hate Israel - it's the only place in the Middle East where people are allowed to be people (Getty Images)As Opposition leader, what Starmer says matters only internally. As prospective PM, he cannot give in to copy-and-paste email campaigns by ex-Momentum activists still under the impression their party was a beacon of peace and love when its leader laid wreaths for Palestinian terrrorists.
Labour MPs in constituencies with large Muslim votes are right to worry what effect this will have on their re-election. Some had had police warnings to avoid their constituency offices when protests are happening. And Starmer has an uphill battle to convince them all that he's got their backs, when he made such a fudge of his first interview on the topic.
There will be other horribly-squeaky moments if he takes power, when a Labour Prime Minister has to sit down the Saudi journalist-mincer Mohammed bin Salman, or shake hands with the Uighur-killing Xi Jinping. And it would be lovely if we could live in a world where we never had to even look at bad men, much less talk to them.
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But that's not the world we're in, nor the country Starmer will lead. A Prime Minister has to do lots of things we'd hate, including telling a bad man "no" while shaking his hand for the cameras, and then making small talk at dinner. As PM, to protect this country's interests - to secure minerals for new battery factories, to use trade deals with Arab countries to bring about peace in Israel, to convince other nations to co-operate on the economy, environment or next pandemic - he has to be a grown-up.
The COVID inquiry is showing us the cost of electing a PM with the morals and attention span of a toddler. Corbyn's leadership of Labour showed us the damage that a perpetually-petulant teenager can do. And if Starmer called for a ceasefire he doesn't believe in, to appease a few MPs or councillors who not five minutes ago were echoing his stance on Israel, his popularity wouldn't just dip - it'd nosedive, right across the population, Jew, Muslim, atheist, Tory and Labour.
Starmer must carry on, but Labour has to decide. Does it want emotion to triumph over practicality, is obstinacy the same as certainty, would Starmer would be a better Prime Minister if he crumpled now? Imagine what could be, and you'll see better what is: he doesn't have the luxury of being able to give in to this self-indulgent claptrap about a ceasefire. And nor does anyone else.
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