‘I’ll always remain an ally of the Jewish community’ vows Labour MP Luke Akehurst

Newly elected Labour MP Luke Akehurst has vowed to remain an “ally of the Jewish community, and a friend of Israel” at the same time as taking on the “heavy responsibility” of representing a constituency in the north of England impacted by decades of social and economic deprivation.

Those who may have not followed the 52 year-old’s career to date could be forgiven for thinking such an ambitious pledge will quickly be forgotten once Akehurst gets more accustomed to a Westminster lifestyle.

North Durham, the seat Akehurst was elected to represent at last week’s election, after all, has only a tiny Jewish presence.

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But, as the now former director of the grassroots campaign group We Believe In Israel, through his work as a moderate voice on Labour’s national executive committee (NEC), and also with his leadership of Labour To Win, the party’s pro-Keir Starmer organisational wing, Akehurst has a track record, second to none, for staying true to his word.

“I’m very sure about where I stand politically,” Akehurst stresses, speaking to Jewish News on the same day he is sworn into the House of Commons, following Labour’s landslide election win.

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“I’ve known where my political views were, particularly the allyship with the Jewish community since I was 16 years old. I’m very certain I am doing the right thing.”

Growing up in Kent, Akehurst first joined Labour as a 16 year-old, and would soon develop close ties with the Union of Jewish Students while studying at the University of Bristol and through his senior role with the Labour Students organisation.

A lengthy stint as a councillor in Hackney saw Akehurst develop strong bonds with the Charedi community, which he also retains today.

“It’s a secular political thing,” he says, when asked to explain why his support for UK Jewry has remained so strong. “There’s many people that come to views on Israel through faith. That’s not my background.

“I came to it through secular political belief in the right of self-determination of the Jewish people and also the responsibility of non-Jewish world to be supportive post-Holocaust.”

Akehurst confirms that his family are not Jewish, but that his grandfather had Jewish friends from his army service during World War II.

At last week’s election, Akehurst secured an ambition to become an MP he has had since first standing in Aldershot, where he came third in 2001.

Offered the relatively safe North Durham seat this time around, with support from some of Starmer’s closest advisers, Akehurst secured a convincing majority made vacant after  Kevan James, Labour’s MP for the constituency since 2001, stepped down.

A campaign waged against him by Momentum activists and pro-Palestine campaigners, failed to stop Akehurst securing a majority of nearly 6,000 over Reform’s Andrew Husband in the seat.

“My allyship with the Jewish community won’t disappear, nor will my stance as a Labour friend of Israel. But my priority is going to have to be my constituency in North Durham,” reasons Akehurst looking forwards.

“I’ve got to focus on being a good constituency MP, delivering on the needs of local people, because that’s the job I’m elected to do. That doesn’t mean I’ve got different beliefs.

“But it does mean my absolute priority has got to be my constituents in Stanley and Chester-Le-Street, and the villages of North Durham.”

A deep political thinker and strategist, Akehurst even finds a way to link the economic decline in the north east to the antisemitism crisis that wrecked his party under Jeremy Corbyn.

He notes that there are “big social and economic problems, and inequalities and deprivation” in North Durham, made worse, argues Akehurst not just because of he policies of the previous Tory government, but also a result of his own party’s drift into a political ideology that made it unelectable.

Askhurst says he new constituents “also suffered because the Labour Party in 2015 went down a rabbit hole of obsession with the Israel/Palestine issue, leading to antisemitism.”

“This meant it was totally unfocussed on bread and butter things that people in Stanley and Chester-Le-Street need sorting out,” he adds, suggesting Labour in fact became “so toxic working-class people that voted Labour all their lives could not vote for us in 2019.”

As director of We Believe In Israel since its foundation in 2011, and through his combative role with the anti-Corbyn wing of Labour, which paved the way for Keir Starmer to become leader, Akehurst has been subjected to cruel and vicious attacks from those who claim to be allies of the expelled Islington North MP, particularly on social media.

He speaks proudly of time with the Israel advocacy group, which he has now stepped down from as director. The grassroots campaign group “gave people a voice, as there was a feeling amongst grassroots supporters of Israel that they didn’t have a way to express themselves when there was a crisis in the region,” adds Akehurst.

“We kept people informed and enabled them to contact their MPs. Citizen lobbying I would call it. We created a very large – 30,000 people on an email list – and a very broad and diverse coalition of people who wanted to do that.”

But this We Believe In Israel role, coupled with his Labour activity, spurred on the Corbynite abusers even more.  “I feel very thick-skinned,” says Akehurst. “The fact that many, many people often offer their solidarity when bad things happen sustains me.

“But it’s inevitable that that kind of abuse does get at you psychologically. And when it includes people wearing masks surrounding your car, preventing you from moving, and shouting abuse, then you begin to have concerns about your personal safety.

“I think that’s a very disturbing development  in British politics. People have moved from debating emotive and contentious issues to harassing people they disagree with.”  

Some of the hate directed at Akehurst is hugely personal, even including faked images from the time he was seriously ill with the rare blood disorder POEMS syndrome, which left him hospitalised for five months and using a wheelchair for nine months afterwards. 

He still uses orthotics and a walking stick.

Speaking about the dark days of illness in 2009, Akehurst reveals:”I didn’t know whether I was going to be alive at one point. And then later that year I didn’t know that I’d ever walk again.

“That kind of life threatening experience when I was only 37 years old, made me want to get on with achieving everything I possibly could and made me value life very much.”

Akehurst is hugely optimistic about the arrival of a Labour government under Starmer. An under-stated person himself, Akehurst is also committed to making his new role as an MP a success.

His past political experience outside Westminster leaves him already a fine speaker.

Jewish News witnessed Akehurst deliver a forceful reminder to party activists months before the election was called about the dangers of over confidence and complacency, with the opinion polls showing Labour continually in the lead.

At the Labour Party conference last October, held under the dark shadow of the Hamas terror attack in Israel, Akehurst delivered an impassioned and moving tribute to the peace activists slaughtered by terrorists only days earlier on a kibbutz Akehurst had recently visited.

At one stage in the moving speech he burst into tears as he paid tribute to those murdered by Hamas terrorists.

At last week’s election Akehurst is fully aware that many voters from the community returned to Labour again out of frustration at the Tories record on economic, social and environmental issues, there is still concern about Labour’s position on Israel, particularly around recognition of a Palestinian state.

“My understanding is that this is intended to happen, not as an immediate thing,” says Akehurst of Labour’s commitment to recognition. “If it was an immediate thing it would have happened five days ago, the Corbyn commitment was about doing it on day one.

“But the idea is that the UK can contribute to a peace process, and at an appropriate junction where our international partners, including the US believe that it would be a positive contribution to the peace process.

“And that strikes me as quite a responsible way to behave. Recognition is going to come at some stage if you believe in a two state solution.  The impression I get is the Labour government is being cautious about this and is trying to do it as a responsible partner in the context of trying to bring forward or start a peace process that doesn’t really exist.”

Clarifying his beliefs as a staunch Zionist, Akehurst says he was “very happy” to campaign ahead of the election on Labour’s manifesto commitment for the region.

“I don’t logically see how you can be a Zionist and believe in Jewish national self-determination and not believe in Palestinian national self-determination as well.”

He says he believes the UK’s Jewish community has a settled two-state view on Israel and Palestine, but adds that going into parliament as a “rookie backbencher” he will not attempt to second guess foreign office ministers “who have access to far more information” than himself on the conflict in the Middle East.

Akehurst also admits he will never drop his guard against an attempt by the hard-left to stage a comeback in Labour, despite the control currently being exerted by his own wing of the party.

“The lesson we have learned from 2015 is to be constantly vigilant,” he says, recalling the dark days of the Corbynista take-over. “We’ve put in place safeguards that make it more difficult for an extremist candidate to get on the ballot, and for people to join en masse to vote during an election campaign.

“These are rule changes that I was very much involved in. Getting them through at the 2021 conference was hugely important. But in the same way that I’ll be looking for ways to make sure extremists can’t try and capture Labour, the people on the extremes will constantly be looking at ways around them. I’m not complacent.”

Neither is Akehurst complacent about the threat posed by the new wave of pro-Palestine independent candidates, five of whom triumphed at the election, nor the threat to his party posed by the right-wing elements uniting around Reform UK.

It is clear he takes great strength from the new found diversity of the Labour Party post election, with Jewish, Muslim, along with a new wave of Sikh MPs now  inside the party, some already at senior level.

“I think it’s great,  all the people you’ve just named…” says Akehurst, after Jewish News asks if the senior roles in the party given to Jewish MPs like Sarah Sackman and Georgia Gould, along with the appointment of a Muslim Justice Secretary in Shabanah Mahmood might help to forge closer links between communities here driven apart as a result of the impact of the conflict in Gaza.

“These really are the people that I hope will be working together. There’s many, many aspects around the diversity of our government, and the diversity of our new much-enlarged parliamentary Labour Party that should be celebrated, this is one of them.”