PERSPECTIVE: A changed Party: Thousands of British Jews re-establish confidence in the Labour Party.

Keir Starmer pledges to work closely with the Jewish community going ahead.

Timmy Mabs | 5th July, 2024.

Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer and his wife Victoria Starmer are cheered at a watch party for the results of the 2024 General Election in central London.

The London Central General Election, 2024.
The unprecedented landslide victory for Labour is evidence of the prime minister's reformation of the party. From the dark days of 2019, Keir's leadership and the perseverance of everyone who believes Labour can be a credible, mainstream party of government have transformed our party beyond recognition.

Outside Downing Street, addressing the country as the first Labour leader to go from opposition to government in 27 years,  the prime minister spoke eloquently and honestly of a “wound” brought about by a lack of trust in British politics.

Nowhere was this lack of trust more apparent than in the Labour party itself prior to his leadership. For the last five years, Keir Starmer has worked tirelessly to rid his party of Corbyn-era antisemitism that in 2019 deprived British Jews of a choice. Five years on, thousands of British Jews once again put their trust in the Labour party.

This is an extraordinary feat of leadership.  Seeing so many constituencies with significant Jewish communities back Labour is the best measure of the progress our party has made towards Keir’s commitment to tear out Corbyn-era antisemitism by its roots. Witnessing a new generation of Jewish parliamentarians enter parliament as proud Labour Zionists is incredibly heartening. They are joined by a huge new intake of allies who have stood with the Jewish community in recent years. Many of them have visited Israel on LFI delegations over the past 18 months and I’ve seen first-hand how impressive they are.

The prime minister’s acknowledgment that he enters Downing Street at a time of unprecedented global insecurity is nowhere more apparent than for Israel and the Middle East. Keir has been clear in the need to end the violence, release the hostages and a massive scaling up of aid to Gaza. He has also rightly recognised there has been a lack of British leadership when it comes to supporting a path to a two-state solution and has committed to working with our allies, including Arab States, to restart a political process.

One of the biggest achievements of the last Labour government was the Good Friday Agreement. Underpinning peace in Northern Ireland was an investment in people-to-people peace-building – through the International Fund for Ireland – that laid the foundation for peace.

Michael Rubin, Labour Friends of Israel.

Inspired by the Irish fund, and pioneered by the Alliance for Middle East Peace, there is a huge opportunity for the creation of an International Fund for Israeli-Palestinian Peace. As ALLMEP’s John Lyndon has said, if a renewed diplomatic process is to succeed where all its predecessors have failed, then it must be very different to what has come before.

Civil society must be put at the core of any strategy, rather than at the margins as has been the case in every single previous attempt at final status diplomacy. It’s therefore encouraging that both Keir and David Lammy have committed to supporting the International Fund. Given the recent history of conflict in our own islands, championing this initiative is a uniquely important contribution Britain’s new government can play.

The insecure world the Prime Minister acknowledges Britain is facing is in large part due to the malign and de-stabilising influence of the regime in Iran. Labour has rightly acknowledged this clear and present threat.  The Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), the regime’s ideological army, led the unprecedented direct assault on Israel in April, have worked to radicalise British young people and have been behind murderous attacks in the UK.

The Labour party has been clear that the IRGC must be proscribed, with the manifesto pledging to take the approach used for dealing with non-state terrorism and adapt it to deal with state-based domestic security threats.

In recent years LFI has played our part in identifying areas where the UK can learn from the Jewish state. Despite the security crisis facing Israel, it remains a country making groundbreaking advances in priority areas for the new government, including in health, climate and agriculture technology.

There are significant opportunities for the government to look to Israel for the advances the UK will need to reform the NHS and stimulate economic growth.  Expanding and deepening the UK-Israel bilateral relationship for the benefit of our universities, businesses and community is the best answer to BDS.

The prime minister spoke movingly about Britain’s ability to navigate the ‘storms of history’. Israel and the Jewish people have all too often found themselves downwind of these storms.  It is huge comfort to know the UK has a strong Labour prime minister committed to weathering these storms and taking us toward safer shores, hand-in-hand with the Jewish community.