By Anna Stanley
The United Kingdom’s has a new Prime Minister, Andy Burnham, and Britain is taking an increasingly tough line towards Israel. That trajectory did not begin with Burnham, but his early decisions suggest he intends to deepen it. From expanding sanctions to trade restrictions on settlements, the architecture is already beginning to take shape.
Burnham spent almost a decade as Mayor of Greater Manchester, a city home to one of Europe’s largest Jewish communities. Perhaps this influenced his historically supportive stance. In 2015, he joined Labour Friends of Israel, a parliamentary group dedicated to strengthening UK-Israel relations and opposing the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement. That same year, he declared that, if elected leader, his first overseas visit would be to the country. Fast forward to 2026, and that ship has most certainly sailed.
As a harbinger of things to come, Burnham released statements apologising that the Labour Party had “not got it right” on Israel and Gaza. He promised Labour would “do better” under his government and signalled he was prepared to consider stronger measures, including further sanctions and a ban on trade with Israeli settlements. What also made this concerning was the timing: as he did this just prior to becoming Prime Minister. Critics and Jewish organisations argued that the premature announcement was divisive, signalling that Israel would be among the first issues on which he intended to distinguish his leadership.
Burnham’s choice for his first long-form interview as Prime Minister was not with any mainstream media, but with the celebrity football commentator, Gary Lineker, on his YouTube podcast. Lineker had recently left the BBC after facing extensive criticism over allegations of antisemitism relating to his social media activity. This included incendiary commentary about Israel, and his sharing a post which featured a picture of a rat captioned, “Zionism explained in two minutes.”
For a politician who had once cultivated close ties with Britain’s Jewish community, it was a striking choice.
That said, some perspective is in order. For a substantial number of politicians on the progressive left, Israel’s right to exist is not taken as a given, but as a proposition to be debated. The Green Party’s leader, Zack Polanski, has described Israel as a “genocidal apartheid state”. For the last conference, delegates planned a motion calling for a “single Palestinian state” and the right to achieve it using “armed struggle.” Last week, Hackney’s newly elected Green Mayor announced she wanted to “un-twin” the borough from the Israeli city of Haifa. (Yes, nobody else knew the two cities were twinned either.) She then ghoulishly gave Haifa until 7 October to respond.
When the bar for the political milieu is set that low, it is tempting to feel relief that Labour, with its commanding majority, is in government rather than the Greens. But the Green Party remains an important force shaping the political environment in which Labour formulates its Israel policy. Since Polanski became leader, the Greens have gained support, especially among younger voters and those disillusioned with Labour, many of whom are dissatisfied because they believe Labour has not taken a sufficiently hard line on Israel. Burnham cannot ignore this political reality. He faces pressure not only from within his own party, but also from the Greens to Labour’s left, who compete for many of the same voters.
Labour has not yet crossed certain red lines. Has it called for Israel’s destruction? No. Does it recognise Israel’s right to exist? Yes. Does it accept Israel’s right to defend itself? Yes. But professing those principles is one thing; pursuing policies that uphold them is another. Labour’s increasingly hard-line approach towards Israel sits uneasily with those commitments. A state’s right to exist is inseparable from its ability to safeguard its own people and exercise its sovereignty. Policies that weaken Israel’s capacity to do either render those principles hollow in practice.
Labour continues to advocate for a two-state solution and has already recognised Palestine as a state, which was announced while Israeli hostages were still under the ground in Gaza. They also argue Israeli expansions in the West Bank undermines the prospects for peace. Burnham has said there is an “unjustifiable humanitarian disaster” unfolding there. Burnham has also received pressure to recognise the UN commission of inquiry findings that Israel is committing a genocide, from a letter signed by 80 Parliamentarians.
Burnham’s appointment of Ed Miliband as Foreign Secretary emphasises the direction his government is likely to take. In his first statement, Miliband said he would “work tirelessly to seek a sustainable peace in Palestine and Israel, including an end to the terrible suffering of the people of Gaza and security for the people of Israel.”
He also declared the Government’s intention to “…seek to end the conflict in Iran and fully reopen the Strait of Hormuz.” This aspiration sits uneasily with reports that he led a Cabinet revolt against allowing the United States to use British bases during its military action against Iran. This suggests a government less willing to support military measures against Iran than either Washington or Jerusalem would expect or prefer, whilst being more inclined to pursue diplomatic engagement rather than full military alignment.
Miliband will be advised by Stephen Doughty, the Minister of State for the Middle East who also oversees Britain’s sanctions regimes. Doughty has repeatedly voiced concern about Israeli settlement activity and told the House of Commons that “settler violence is intense and threatens the integrity of the state of Palestine.”
Doughty has also made clear that sanctions against violent settlers are only the beginning.
In July, he told the House of Commons that although there have been sanctions against violent settlers, he was concerned that he could not yet sanction “a contractor working on the settlements” adding, “We need to expand our sanctions powers.”
That ambition is already beginning to translate into policy: the Government has confirmed it is drawing up plans to prohibit imports from, and exports to, Israeli settlements in the West Bank. Such a ban would go well beyond the existing targeted sanctions on violent settlers, potentially cutting off a range of goods and commercial activity linked to the settlements themselves. This would impact anyone doing business in the area, directly affecting ordinary people’s livelihoods.
Exactly when these expanded sanctions will be introduced remains uncertain. Officials within the Foreign Office have reportedly questioned how enforceable a comprehensive settlements ban would be under the existing sanctions framework, suggesting that delivering Burnham’s stated ambitions may require not only political will, but also practical changes to the way Britain’s sanctions regime is designed and enforced.
There are also political considerations. Some parliamentary critics of Israel are concerned that imposing sanctions before Israel’s October elections could prove counterproductive, giving Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu an opportunity to use international criticism to rally voters and boost his electoral prospects.
Burnham’s early decisions, the appointments he has made and the policies his ministers are developing all point in the same direction: a government willing to increase diplomatic and economic pressure on Israel. Political constraints, legal questions and practical difficulties may slow aspects of Labour’s agenda, but for Jerusalem the broader trajectory is already clear. Britain is moving towards a more confrontational relationship with Israel, characterised by criticism, diplomatic pressure, trade restrictions and harsher sanctions.
Anna Stanley is an open-source investigator specialising in extremism. She previously worked in intelligence roles for the UK Foreign Office and police. Find her on X.