Why life for Britain’s Jews could well get worse under Andy Burnham

In a little more than 100 days, Israel will hold a general election, with current polling indicating that Benjamin Netanyahu and his governing coalition will lose. Were this to happen, it is highly likely that the new government would seek to roll back a range of highly controversial legislative actions rammed through by its predecessors. It would seize the opportunity for a re-set, not just domestically, but internationally.

There is no way that the UK Foreign Office, and the office of the incoming Prime Minister, does not know this – after all, Andy Burnham himself is seeking to project the idea of a political re-set. A country that was serious about its role in an Israeli-Palestinian peace process, as successive governments have consistently claimed that Britain is, would see this as a once-in-a-generation opportunity.

They would be reaching out, via back channels, to prominent leaders within Israel’s opposition, making it clear that the deterioration of the relationship between the two countries under Netanyahu’s leadership was highly regrettable, but that they were dedicated to its repair, precisely because of the need to reach a long-lasting settlement in the region.

There is absolutely no indication that Andy Burnham, or his team, have made any effort to do this, and it is perfectly clear why. Burnham’s priority is to try and win back former Labour voters who withdrew their support over the issue of Gaza. Adopting a more hostile policy towards Israel is a means to that attempted end.

This would be somewhat understandable, were it not for the fact that it won’t work – trying to assuage people who are vehemently anti-Israel with anything short of a full diplomatic rupture is doomed to fail. The attempt, however, is itself notable, because there are few politicians in England who have proved to be more susceptible to targeted political campaigns than Andy Burnham, whether in a positive way – Hillsborough – or a negative one – axing a planned clear air zone for Manchester.

The Palestine Solidarity Campaign may not realise yet, but Andy Burnham as Prime Minister is likely to be the biggest gift they have ever received.

It is perfectly clear why. Burnham’s priority is to try and win back former Labour voters who withdrew their support over the issue of Gaza

The stage is therefore already being set for efforts to further worsen the relationship between the two countries. The FCDO is reportedly preparing to institute a blanket ban on the import or export of what are called “settlement goods”.

We should not be surprised that it has come to this. Burnham’s policy is the natural continuation of the reversal of longstanding foreign policy under Keir Starmer

Settlements, of course, are something of a blanket term. No distinction is made between a hilltop outpost with a dozen gun-toting fanatics, and a suburb of Jerusalem with 30,000 inhabitants who have been there for half a century. The obvious question is why should there be any distinction? After all, International law does not recognise such differences. The answer to that should be equally obvious, for those willing to hear it. Israel has carried out two withdrawals of its own citizens in the last 45 years, one uprooting 7,000 people from the Sinai peninsula, the other forcing out 9,000 Jewish inhabitants in the Gaza strip.

The Palestinian “moderate” leadership’s concept of a two-state solution is one in which Israel’s current Arab population remains, but the Palestinian state is entirely devoid of Jews. Without any form of acknowledgment that a future peace agreement will require land swaps (something acknowledged within the structure of any historic attempted Israeli-Palestinian peace deal, by the way) a variety of European countries – soon to include the UK – are signing up to a concept which ultimately demands the expulsion of close to 800,000 Jewish people from their homes. How positively Medieval of them.

We should not be surprised, however, that it has come to this. Burnham’s policy is the natural continuation of the reversal of longstanding foreign policy under Keir Starmer. If you recognise the West Bank and East Jerusalem – including the Old City, containing Judaism’s holiest sites – as Palestinian territory, then sooner or later you are going to move to penalise any Jews who are living there.

Mr Burnham, as with some of the ministers under Keir Starmer, has attempted to distinguish between an increasingly Israel-hostile policy and a determination to protect the UK Jewish community. In comments this week to the Jewish Labour Movement, Andy Burnham wrote that “there is no contradiction between condemning the destruction in Gaza and calling out those who use that cause to attack the Jewish community in Britain”.

Our incoming Prime Minister may genuinely not realise it, but in the same way that antisemitic attacks have always soared in the UK when Israel has fought a conflict, there is absolutely no scenario where the British government promotes a more hard-line anti-Israel stance which does not have a severely detrimental impact on the UK’s Jewish community.

From Ireland to South Africa and Spain to Belgium, increased hostility towards Israel by a government has been viewed as a permission structure by local Jew-haters to engage in antisemitism behind a masquerade of “anti-Zionism”, with local Jewish communities suffering as a result. There is no reason why this would play out differently in Britain.

A longstanding critique of Mr Burnham is that he is a political weather-vane – a particularly cutting joke that has long made the rounds is “a Blairite, a Brownite and a Corbynite walk into a pub, and the barman says ‘what will it be then, Andy?’” Sadly, that reputation suggests that the British Jewish community is in for a very long, hard three years.

We can only hope that the country’s new leader can find it in himself to positively surprise us.