Keir Starmer is a terrible person

It has been obvious for years that Keir Starmer is an untrustworthy person, and that whatever principles he has are conservative, authoritarian and mean-spirited. By this point, it would require a level of naivety to find this surprising, but from time to time it still has the power to shock. Last night (October 1), Starmer made a televised speech, following Iran launching a missile attack on Israel, which might just have been one of his worst moments yet.

Starmer began by accusing Iran of launching ballistic missiles at “civilian targets” in Israel. But according to media reports, including in The New York Times (hardly a radical anti-Zionist press), the missiles were aimed at military targets, including the headquarters of Mossad (Israel’s equivalent to the CIA) and two air bases. It’s true that the missiles caused damage to civilian infrastructure, damaging a school and a restaurant, and that the operation represents a significant escalation, which could be a harbinger of even more terrible devastation in the region. But when Israel attacks military targets which are located within or near civilian areas, its apologists – like Starmer – insist that this is legitimate: no matter how many Palestinian or Lebanese people are killed, it is always Israel’s opponents who are at fault for hiding among civilians and using them as “human shields”. Starmer himself has made this exact argument. 

There has only been one fatality reported as a result of last night’s attack, and this was a Palestinian man in the West Bank who was hit by falling shrapnel. No one was killed in Tel Aviv, and while it was no doubt a traumatic experience, there have been no serious injuries reported. But Starmer still expects us to take this more seriously than the 1000 people killed and 6000 injured in Lebanon within the last two weeks alone. He expects us to view it as more shocking and tragic than the tens of thousands who have been massacred in Gaza, in a campaign which countless experts have described as genocidal. He expects us to believe that Israel, which had earlier that day launched a ground invasion into Lebanon and which has recently bombed Iran’s consulate in Damascus, is the innocent victim of an unprovoked attack, rather than the most belligerent and destablising force in the region, whose own officials have admitted to pursuing a policy of escalation. 

Obviously, Starmer is not going to appear on TV and praise the Iranian Revolutionary Guard for pulling off a military coup against a British ally. But that doesn’t mean he has to distort the facts so brazenly or show such a callous lack of care for the victims of Israel’s aggressions: not only the dead, but the millions going hungry, the millions who have been displaced, the thousands maimed, the thousands grieving, and the literally incalculable number of children who have been orphaned. Next to his impassioned speech last night, none of this has ever appeared to have roused any strong emotions.

He did not take to the podium when Israel bombed refugee camps, universities, areas which had been designated as “safe zones” or hundreds of schools in Gaza, nor did he feel compelled to make an impromptu speech at any point during Israel’s sustained campaign against the area’s hospitals, during which it has attacked 464 health care facilities, killed 727 health care workers and damaged or destroyed 113 ambulances. He did not take to the podium when Israel killed three British citizens in Gaza, who were working for an international aid organisation. He did not take to the podium when the IDF killed Hind Rajab, a six year old girl who had been stranded in a vehicle for hours, surrounded by the bodies of her relatives and begging for help on the phone, after her family had attempted to flee Gaza City for safety. Despite having spent his political career trading on his credentials as a human rights lawyer, he didn’t take to the podium when the International Court of Justice ruled that Israel is violating international prohibitions on apartheid and racial segregation, and ordered it to end its illegal occupation of the Palestinian territories, to dismantle its settlements and to provide full reparation to Palestinian victims. 

Starmer doesn’t seem to care about the victims of Israel’s aggressions: not only the dead, but the millions going hungry, the thousands maimed, and the literally incalculable number of children who have been orphaned

The message of Starmer’s speech last night was clear: the safety of Israelis is more important than the safety of Palestinians or people in Lebanon. International law only applies to our opponents: Israel can do whatever it wants by virtue of being our ally, and the government is happy to lie to us to defend its actions. Britain will continue to defer to the foreign policy positions set down by Washington, even if this means dragging us into a war.

People in Britain are, increasingly, refusing to accept these framings. Recent YouGov surveys found that a majority of people support suspending arms exports to Israel, a majority believe that Israel should halt its military campaign, and a larger number sympathise with Palestine. Keir Starmer is faring even worse: last month, a YouGov poll found that 56 per cent of the public now have a negative view of him, which is unusually bad for this early on in a prime minister’s tenure. A separate poll – by MoreinCommon – found that most people now prefer the last Conservative government to his.

These low approval ratings are not, for the most part, related to Starmer’s stance on Middle East politics: they’re more about scrapping the winter fuel allowance, the free gifts scandal, and the fact that people never liked him that much to begin with. Hitching his wagon to a deeply unpopular killing spree (and as a statement from the Defence Secretary John Healey yesterday made clear, the British military is already involved) is not going to help him turn things around, but then public opinion has never counted for much when it comes to foreign policy. 

Civilians everywhere deserve to be safe, but this principle counts for nothing unless it’s universal. Faced with the prospect of further escalation in the Middle East, it is up to us to reject a racist worldview which holds that some people, by virtue of their ethnicity and national identity, matter so little that their deaths can be dismissed as collateral damage, unworthy of even a passing remark.