Against a backdrop of surging antisemitic incidents across the United Kingdom and growing political pressure to respond, Prime Minister Keir Starmer has publicly backed justified bans on specific pro-Palestinian demonstrations, singling out events that incite violence with chants calling for a global intifada. Starmer, who leads the Labour Party, has found himself in a precarious position after a recent stabbing attack in a major London Jewish neighborhood left two people injured. The incident, which took place in Golders Green – an area well-known for its large, longstanding Jewish community – has amplified calls for the new prime minister to take stronger action to protect Jewish residents.
On Friday, the 45-year-old suspect, a British national born in Somalia, made his first court appearance on attempted murder charges and was remanded into custody ahead of further proceedings. The attack came amid months of ongoing pro-Palestinian protests across UK cities that began in the wake of Hamas’ October 7, 2023, attack on Israel, which triggered the ongoing Israel-Gaza war. During a visit to the attack scene and a local Jewish volunteer ambulance service on Thursday, Starmer faced public backlash from local residents, who booed him and accused his administration of failing to take adequate steps to keep the community safe. Many of those critics also blamed ongoing pro-Palestinian marches for creating a climate of fear.
In a broadcast interview with the BBC on Saturday, Starmer, a former human rights lawyer and ex-chief public prosecutor who is married to a woman of Jewish descent, said repeated protests had left a profound negative impact on many British Jewish people. “I’m a big defender of freedom of expression, peaceful protests,” he told the outlet. “But when there are chants like ‘globalise the intifada’, that’s completely off limits. Clearly, there should be tougher action in relation to that.”
The term intifada refers to two historical Palestinian uprisings against Israeli occupation, the first running from 1987 to 1993 and a second occurring in the early 2000s. Starmer emphasized that the chant is viewed as deeply threatening by the UK Jewish community, and argued for much stricter enforcement of acceptable language at demonstrations. He confirmed that there are scenarios where entire protests should be prohibited, and that senior government officials have been holding ongoing discussions with policing leadership for weeks about what additional regulatory and enforcement action can be implemented.
This stance aligns with a position police in London and Manchester first took last December, when officers announced they would arrest any person chanting “globalise the intifada” at public demonstrations. In a related development Thursday, UK security officials upgraded the national terror alert level to “severe” – the second-highest tier on the country’s threat scale. Officials cited the Golders Green attack, alongside persistent threats from both Islamist extremism and far-right extremism, as core factors driving the upgrade. UK police have confirmed that they will conduct enhanced, thorough reviews of all notifications for upcoming protests to assess potential risks to public safety.