Nandy: Gaza takeover plan one of the reasons government moved on Palestine recognition

Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy has said the government is “absolutely opposed” to any proposal by Israel to reoccupy Gaza, adding this was “one of the reasons” Keir Starmer had moved to announce his plan for Palestinian recognition.

Nandy told ITV’s Good Morning Britain programme:”We have long opposed settlement building, which has made a two state solution become a far distant prospect.

“And that’s one of the reasons why the Prime Minister has taken the steps he has in recent days.

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“Signalling our intent to move, with the French government to recognise Palestine, because it’s an essential precondition of peace and successful peace talks that you recognise that there are two parties there.

“There must be two states, and both Palestinians and Israelis have the right to their own self-governance and expression. ”

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Nandy, a former chair of the Labour Friends of Palestine group, while also being firmly outspoken over the rise of antisemitism in the UK, appeared to suggest the UK should have moved to recognise a Palestinian state earlier, but added we were now at “a critical moment where world leaders need to step forward and act.”

“And as a government that is what we are doing,” added Nandy.  She said Palestinians needed to be offered “hope” and said “the appalling terrorists like Hamas offer no hope of peace for the people in Palestine or in Israel.”

She continued: “We now need to move towards meaningful and serious talks to establish the two states that we’ve talked about for a very long time but made very little progress towards.”

As Good Morning Britain displayed footage taken from a plane over Gaza showing the extent of devastation to some of the region as a result of Israel’s bombardment, Nandy said felt “absolutely sick to the stomach watching that.”

She said it was important ITV had been able to obtain the footage “and that you’re showing it on a prime slot on on broadcast media.”

“Because one of the challenges that there has been since this conflict began is that the voices of people in Gaza have effectively been silenced,” she added.

“Journalists aren’t allowed in, and so those stories aren’t getting out.”

In a series of media interviews on Wednesday, Nandy also discussed the BBC’s “catastrophic failure” to prevent “antisemitic death chants” being broadcast during live coverage of Bob Vylan’s performance at the Glastonbury Festival in June.

She said she had met with the BBC’s Director General Tim Davie and Chair Samir Shah and  “they are making a whole series of changes in relation to that what the chairman himself described to me as a ‘catastrophic failure’ that led to them broadcasting an antisemitic death chant for several minutes for the entire nation. ”

Nandy added: “They’ve recognised that that can never happen again.

“They’ve taken a series of measures, including strengthening their own internal procedures  about oversight and governance, about live broadcasts, about due diligence and risk.”

But asked by LBC presenter Nick Ferrari if she was confident the same mistakes could not be made again by the BBC, Nandy added: “I can’t say that I’m currently confident about that. But I do recognize that there’s been significant progress that has been made in the last few weeks.”

Asked on BBC’s Today programme  whether she wanted to express confidence in Davie, Nandy replied: “Let me be really clear about this because there has been a lot of reporting around what I have or haven’t said about Tim Davie in particular.”

“It is not my role to determine who works for the BBC. That is a matter for the board. That is set out in the charter. That is part of the independence of the BBC and that is really important.”

Pressed on whether she had pulled back from her previous criticism, she said: “I absolutely believe that the BBC board has to get a grip on the very many failures which they have said to me themselves … the chairman of the board described them to me a catastrophic failings and he was right.”

“When it comes the Gaza documentary and the errors that were made around that, the lack of due diligence,” she added, referring to a BBC documentary about children in Gaza  found to have breached the corporation’s editorial guidelines for accuracy by failing to disclose that its child narrator was the son of a Hamas official.

“When it comes to the decision to livestream an act at Glastonbury that was flagged already very high risk and to broadcast antisemitic death chants to the nation for several minutes on a Saturday afternoon – yes, these are catastrophic failures.”