Labour’s moral failure over 7 October

Yesterday, as part of an online Q&A, Andy Burnham was asked about Gaza. His response was entirely unsurprising, for anyone who has been studying how the former Mayor of Manchester operates.

I could spend the rest of this piece identifying the many places in his video during which the next leader of this country sacrificed reality on the altar of political expediency (if, heaven forbid, a terrorist organisation attacked Britain in August, murdering 1,200 people and taking 250 as hostages, would Prime Minister Burnham be quite so ready to call for a ceasefire three weeks later? Unlikely) But I would just be preaching to a choir made up of anyone with the ability to grasp basic facts.

Instead, I would like to focus on an element on Burnham’s comments which I think demonstrates, over and above anything else, the naked political calculation over Gaza that the Labour government has chosen to pursue.

Before moving on to the grand theme of his statement: condemnation of Israel and its actions, Burnham offered the standard lip service to the cause of such actions. “I want to repeat what I’ve said before about the actions of Hamas and the monstrous 7 October terror attack”, he earnestly told the camera, “which I condemn as strongly today as I did in the immediate aftermath.”

If, heaven forbid, a terrorist organisation attacked Britain in August, murdering 1,200 people and taking 250 as hostages, would Prime Minister Burnham be quite so ready to call for a ceasefire three weeks later? Unlikely

Fast forward in his video statement, to just beyond the point where Burnham apologises for how “at the start of Israel’s military action in Gaza, my party didn’t get it right”, to where he lists the things which he believes Labour should be given credit for. These include “placing sanctions on Israel ministers and imposing waves of sanctions on violent settlers and the organisations that support them.”

I do not have any great sympathy for the far-right Israeli ministers who have been sanctioned, or for any people in the West Bank carrying out acts of violence.

But I think it is worth pointing out that, for more than two years, this government has been in a position to proscribe a terror group which unquestionably took part in the 7 October massacre. It was provided proof of that involvement, and it was shown that people in the UK were directly celebrating this organisation. And yet, even as the government put out self-congratulatory press releases about sanctioning another Israeli politician who had no intention of visiting here, that group still remains legal to support here in the UK.

The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine has existed for almost six decades. Its heyday was the late 60s and 70s, where it specialised in hijackings. But despite a stream of splits (one splinter group is rather confusingly called the “Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command”) it has remained a constant presence, through violence carried out by its Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades.

On the morning of 7 October 2023, the PFLP released a statement calling “on the sons of our heroic people throughout Palestine to actively participate in the ‘Al-Aqsa Flood’ battle, each from his own position and with whatever tools he possesses, to pounce on the enemy army and its settlers…and pursue the terrified Zionist invaders in the face of the resistance’s strikes and inflict blows on them in every inch of the land of Palestine.” The Telegram channel of the Abu Ali Mustafa brigades also posted pictures of its members attacking Israel, describing cells “operating in the field now to inflict more losses in the ranks of the occupation army troops and the herds of their settlers.”

By “settlers”, of course, they meant civilians.

The participation of the PFLP in the events of 7 October is not in doubt. The organisation is proud of its involvement.

As anti-Israel protests began to choke up British cities on a regular basis, marchers knew that Hamas had been proscribed, in its entirety, as a terrorist organisation, and that publicly expressed support for Hamas would therefore lead to arrest and conviction.

But the PFLP is not proscribed in the UK. It is proscribed by the EU, and so prior to Brexit, support for it here was banned. But despite Jewish communal organisations repeatedly flagging the loophole which would effectively re-legalise it, once we officially left the EU in early 2020, successive governments did nothing to proscribe it.

In the post-7 October era, this loophole was, inevitably, recognised and taken advantage of by elements of the pro-Palestinian protestors. The PFLP banner was waved at marches in London and Liverpool, and flown by Celtic’s notorious “Green Brigade” ultras. In early 2025, a book tour promoting the writings of the PFLP’s original spokesperson, Ghassan Kanafani, took place in the UK.

I know through personal experience that the Home Office was aware of this issue. I know, because in my previous role, working for a Jewish communal organisation, we had told them about it directly. A clapped out Conservative government had done nothing, post 7 October, to close this loophole. And so, in May 2024, we also gave this information to Labour, then in opposition, in the hope that were they to win the election that year, they would do what the Conservatives, for reasons beyond understanding, had not.

I have the messages in my phone. PFLP press releases from the morning of 7 October. Examples of behaviour supporting the PFLP in the UK. All shared with Labour.

But they took no action. Even as Keir Starmer’s government recognised a Palestinian state and imposed sanctions on a range of Israelis in a desperate attempt to shore up part of a collapsing base, it did nothing – and still has done nothing – to proscribe the PFLP.

Yesterday, Andy Burnham told those listening that when it came to Israel’s actions, the UK “need[ed] to do more”, and he specifically cited “looking at further sanctions…on those involved in the violence in Gaza”.

But by that, he does not mean the PFLP. Given the context of his remarks, he very clearly only means Israelis. And that is how you can tell that his comments about condemning 7 October “as strongly today as in the aftermath” are worth less than nothing.