In the House of Commons on Tuesday, one pro-Palestine independent MP, Dewsbury and Batley’s Iqbal Mohamed, gave a flavor of the many contentious issues Starmer will still have to navigate.
He called for the British PM to push for the release of 10,000 captives still being held by Israel, and to oppose fresh settlements on the West Bank. An official working with the left-wing Independent Group of MPs, many of whom rode to office after campaigning on the issue, insisted the Gaza problem “isn’t going away for Keir Starmer.”
Discussions would soon turn to “what this government has enabled,” they predicted, as more details about the destruction in Gaza during the conflict emerge. Pro-Palestine marches will, they said, likely continue.
Pollsters are also skeptical that the ceasefire will repair Starmer’s standing among the Brits he has lost.
“Whilst Gaza may fall down news agendas, the voters that have left Labour over the issue did so because they perceived the party to have failed morally,” Scarlett Maguire, director of Merlin Strategy, said. “For these voters that is a binary test, and it will be hard to persuade them back to the fold.”