Sir Keir Starmer driven to recognise Palestine by cabinet pressure

The British PM came under huge pressure from ‘very loyal people’ including cabinet ministers before he declared the UK would acknowledge a Palestinian state at the UN.

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer makes an address following an emergency cabinet meeting on Gaza at 10 Downing Street on Tuesday. Picture: AFP

In the end it felt inevitable. After weeks of pressure from backbenchers and members of the cabinet, Sir Keir Starmer announced that the UK would recognise Palestine at the UN general assembly.

There were some caveats. The prime minister said the UK could back away from recognition if Israel reached a ceasefire, backed a two-state solution and agreed not to annex the West Bank. In reality, though, the ultimatum was rhetorical. Sir Keir knows that there is no chance that Israel will make such significant concessions.

All this means that, come September, Britain will join France at the UN general assembly in recognising a Palestinian state. The prime minister hopes that the two nations will not be alone. He wants recognition to have the “maximum impact”, and plans a concerted diplomatic effort to encourage other countries to join them.

Government sources have said that Sir Keir did not put specific conditions on Hamas for the recognition of a Palestinian state because, as a terrorist organisation, it would not be involved in talks for a two-state solution.

Given the strength of Sir Keir’s feeling - he looked visibly moved as he spoke at No. 10 about the photographs of starving children in Gaza - why did it take him so long?

Allies of Sir Keir say he has been increasingly open to recognising Palestine for some weeks, but needed persuading that now was the right moment. As a former human rights lawyer, he was convinced of the principle but needed to think through the practical arguments.

Pressure has been building. Over the last week Labour MPs made clear in public and private that they wanted the government to shift. That culminated in more than 130 Labour MPs, and more than 220 in all, signing a letter calling for recognition.

“Behind the scenes there was huge pressure from very loyal people, people in the cabinet and a lot of ministers,” a government source said.

Yvette Cooper, the home secretary, and Wes Streeting, the health secretary, were said to have pressed Starmer “surprisingly hard” in private. Mr Streeting even made his feelings public last Tuesday, saying in the Commons that he wanted to see “the recognition of the state of Palestine while there is still a state of Palestine left to recognise”.

By the end of the week a third of his cabinet including Angela Rayner, the deputy prime minister, had pushed Sir Keir for recognition of Palestine.

After France announced it would recognise Palestine and dozens of MPs spoke publicly at the end of last week, Labour sources sensed that “things started to shift in a more decisive direction”.

However, Sir Keir and No. 10 have consistently argued that it must be meaningful rather than a symbolic gesture - that recognition must be a tool for genuine change. In recent days the government has been briefing that there must be a ceasefire first before recognition can take place, a precondition that has now vanished.

Over the weekend, Sir Keir spoke to French President Macron and Friedrich Merz, the Germany chancellor, in an attempt to forge a common plan to “pave the way to a long-term solution”.

Even on Monday morning, though, Jonathan Reynolds, the business secretary, was being sent out to criticise “tokenistic” recognition of Palestinian statehood, despite the government making preparations to change position.

The prime minister’s public reticence may have been in part because of President Trump’s visit to Scotland over the weekend.

The government was acutely aware of the sensitivities given the US’s fury with Mr Macron after he announced that France would back a Palestinian state. Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, said it was a “reckless decision” that “only serves Hamas propaganda”.

Jonathan Powell, Sir Keir’s national security adviser, spent much of last week in the US attempting to lay the groundwork for a shift in the British position, and ensure Mr Trump’s team were on board.

At his meeting with Sir Keir in Ayrshire on Monday (local time), attended by Mr Powell, this appeared to have born fruit. Mr Trump said that he “didn’t mind” the prime minister taking a position. But by Tuesday Mr Trump had hardened his position, saying he had not discussed recognition with Sir Keir and suggesting the move was “rewarding Hamas”.

Politically, the challenge for Sir Keir is that it looks as though he has had to be dragged to this position. On the face of it nothing has changed about the situation in Gaza over the past week. The images and reports of mass starvation were just as dire as before.

From a domestic perspective, after retreats on winter fuel and welfare, it risks reinforcing a damaging perspective that is emerging on Sir Keir: that he will spend significant time and political capital resisting his party, only to cave in the end.

The bigger question is whether it will make any difference to those starving in Gaza. Certainly the US position on Israel has hardened; Trump has directly contradicted Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, and said that children are starving. A limited amount of aid has been let into Gaza as a result.

Israel, however, is furious, accusing Sir Keir of acting for domestic political reasons and saying the move was “a reward for Hamas and harms efforts to achieve a ceasefire in Gaza”.

This highlights the clear risk in Sir Keir’s move - that Mr Netanyahu reacts by digging in and ignoring European pressure entirely, hindering efforts to persuade him to do more on aid.

Government sources dismiss this, saying that Israel “can’t ignore two permanent members of the UN security council - of course it will change the situation”. Sir Keir’s gamble is that Mr Netanyahu will have no choice but to start listening.

The Times