Is Gaza rebellion a warning for Keir Starmer?

Labour leader Keir Starmer has suffered a major rebellion over his stance on the Israel-Hamas war, with 56 of his MPs voting in the Commons for an immediate ceasefire. 

Ten Labour frontbenchers have left their jobs over the vote, including eight shadow ministers, in "a major blow" to Starmer's attempts to "keep unity" over the Middle East issue, said The Guardian.

Jess Phillips, the shadow minister for domestic violence, was the most high-profile Labour MP to step down from the front bench over the vote. She said she was voting with "my constituents, my head, and my heart". 

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Afzal Khan, Yasmin Qureshi and Paula Barker also quit their frontbench roles on Wednesday night after defying the party whip. Rachel Hopkins, Sarah Owen, Naz Shah and Andy Slaughter were sacked after the vote. Dan Carden and Mary Foy also left posts as parliamentary aides.

The vote was on an SNP amendment to the King's Speech, that called for an end to the "collective punishment of the Palestinian people" and urged "all parties to agree to an immediate ceasefire".

What the papers said

Many of the 56 MPs who backed calls for a ceasefire included "many of the so-called 'usual suspects' on the Labour left" like  Richard Burgon, Ian Lavery, Rebecca Long-Bailey and John McDonnell, said Sky News's chief political correspondent Jon Craig. 

But "crucially" for Starmer, there were no top-tier shadow cabinet rebels, while the nine shadow ministers and parliamentary aides who stepped down were "nearly all minor figures holding low-key posts".

The big exception, however, was the departure of Phillips, "a combative and persuasive media performer and a hard-hitting scourge of the Tory government in the Commons". She is "by far the biggest loss" to the frontbench team, and Starmer might need to be "forgiving after a decent interval" and look for reasons "to restore her to the frontline before the general election".

While the rebellion "stretched beyond Labour's left-wing", the party leadership believe that "the scale of disunity won't be replicated in other policy areas", said Iain Watson of the BBC. They say that the "passion and pressures relating to the Middle East" are "unique".

Starmer's allies say that "calls for a ceasefire from an opposition Labour leader will have no effect on Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu, never mind Hamas in Gaza", and there is therefore "little logic to calling for it", continued Watson. But for Starmer, maintaining this stance means that "politically, he will have to face down continued pressure domestically to change position".

Those shocked by Starmer's position on the Israel-Hamas war have failed to notice that he has long been "a committed Atlanticist" and therefore "the last person" one should expect to break with the "political injunctions" of the US, said Aaron Bastani for UnHerd. 

But if Gaza "really is to endure a second Nakba, with many more set to die and potentially hundreds of thousands displaced" then anyone voting against a ceasefire "will come to be viewed with scorn by the Labour membership in future internal elections", he continued. 

"Blindly partnering such a volatile, if still mighty, empire comes at a cost", and Starmer "may be the last Labour leader who has the luxury to blindly follow Washington and not have to think for himself".

What next?

Labour's "bitter row" over Gaza is a reminder that "with Labour in power, its neuroses will replace Conservatives ones", said The Economist. "Britain has spent a decade wrestling with its position in Europe not because voters demanded it, but because Conservative MPs were obsessed by it," said the paper. "With Labour in office, topics such as Israel and Palestine will become matters of internal political psychodrama rather than cold debate about policy."

But few MPs believe that the row is "anywhere near existential for Starmer", said Politico's London Playbook. It does, however, show that his MPs "are willing to rebel on a matter of principle – and gives us a flavour of ways life could become difficult for him in government, particularly if Labour wins a slim majority in 2024".