As speculation builds over the race to replace Keir Starmer as British prime minister, one critical issue has so far been sidelined by political commentators: Starmer’s controversial handling of Israel’s military campaign in Gaza and ongoing settlement expansion in the occupied West Bank. For now, media coverage has fixated on candidate horse-trading and critiques of Starmer’s governing style, but political insiders agree this dynamic will shift dramatically once the leadership contest formally gets underway. When it does, Starmer’s approach to the Gaza crisis will emerge as one of the race’s defining flashpoints.
Across the Labour Party, a growing consensus holds that whoever succeeds Starmer will need to adopt a far more uncompromising stance toward Israel, with potential policy shifts ranging from targeted sanctions on illegal West Bank settlements and a ban on settlement goods to sweeping, state-level sanctions against Israel itself. Senior Labour figures have already framed the issue as a critical electoral and moral turning point for the party. “Labour’s refusal to properly oppose Israel’s actions in Gaza is one of the key issues that has appalled huge numbers of former Labour voters and driven them away from the party,” Labour MP Richard Burgon told Middle East Eye. Fellow MP Kim Johnson echoed that sentiment, noting: “Any future leader must demonstrate a clear willingness to challenge the Israeli government over the continued violence in Gaza and illegal settlement expansion in the West Bank. I will be looking closely at where any future leader stands on these issues. This includes their willingness to take tough, principled action and their independence from foreign interests in the form of financial backing.”
The field of likely contenders has begun to take shape, with former Health Secretary Wes Streeting, Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner, and Energy Secretary Ed Miliband all tipped as potential candidates. Currently, Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham has emerged as the early frontrunner, should he win the upcoming by-election in Makerfield — a seat vacated by former Starmer ally Josh Simons. Burnham holds overwhelming popularity among Labour’s grassroots membership, but his record on Israel and Middle East policy is nuanced.
As a regional mayor, Burnham has not shaped national Labour policy on the conflict, and he has never positioned himself as a strident pro-Palestine advocate in the mold of former leader Jeremy Corbyn. He joined Labour Friends of Israel (LFI) in 2015, during his first unsuccessful run for the party leadership, when he stated his first overseas visit as leader would be to Israel and described the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement as “spiteful.” Yet even then, Burnham criticized Israeli leadership, calling Benjamin Netanyahu’s 2015 re-election “depressing” and noting that Palestine would require increased international support. After the October 7 2023 Hamas attack, Burnham broke sharply with Starmer’s pro-Israel line, calling for an immediate ceasefire just weeks into the war — at a time when Labour MPs were ordered not to support parliamentary ceasefire votes. He has since cited lessons from the 2003 Iraq War, which he voted for as a young MP, to justify his stance: “the US-UK action resulted in huge harm to innocent civilians,” he has said, adding that those experiences shaped his opposition to the Gaza campaign. Most analysts agree that as prime minister, Burnham would almost certainly toughen Britain’s stance on Israeli violations of international law.
Ed Miliband, Labour leader between 2010 and 2015, has also signaled he would take a harder line than Starmer. Like Burnham, Miliband has long identified as a friend of Israel and opposed boycott campaigns, but he broke with Conservative government policy during the 2014 Israeli bombing of Gaza, which killed more than 1,400 Palestinian civilians. He sharply criticized then-Prime Minister David Cameron’s “inexplicable silence” on “the killing of innocent Palestinian civilians caused by Israel’s military action,” calling Cameron’s position outright wrong. That same year, Miliband backed unilateral recognition of Palestinian statehood, a policy rejected by the Tories. Within Starmer’s cabinet, sources confirm Miliband was a leading voice pushing Starmer to formally recognize a Palestinian state, a step Starmer ultimately took in September 2025. He also successfully lobbied Starmer privately to block the U.S. from using British bases to strike Iran in February 2026, before Starmer partially reversed his decision. For her part, Angela Rayner has been publicly tied to Starmer’s Gaza position as deputy prime minister, but has a longstanding record of supporting Palestinian statehood recognition.
The most politically ambiguous contender is Wes Streeting, whose stance on the issue has shifted dramatically in recent years. A longstanding member of LFI who meets regularly with the group in Westminster, Streeting has received more than £20,000 in donations between 2021 and 2025 from Trevor Chinn, a 90-year-old philanthropist awarded the Israeli Presidential Medal of Honour in 2024 for his service to the state. Immediately after October 7, Streeting followed the official Labour line, repeating Israel’s unsubstantiated claim that Hamas used civilians as human shells and refused to back a ceasefire. In January 2024, he even dismissed South Africa’s genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice as a “distraction” from diplomatic efforts.
But in recent months, Streeting has rebranded himself as a critic of Israel. Anonymous Labour sources claim he privately pushed Starmer for a more pro-Palestinian stance while serving in cabinet. Last September, he stated that Israel’s actions in Gaza were “leading Israel to pariah status.” Then in February 2026, private text correspondence between Streeting and former U.S. ambassador Peter Mandelson was leaked — a move multiple Labour sources believe Streeting orchestrated to boost his leadership prospects. In the July 2025 texts, Streeting warned he could “become toast at the next election” in his marginal Ilford North seat, admitting: “Israel is committing war crimes before our eyes … the Israeli government talks the language of ethnic cleansing, and I have met with our own medics out there who describe the most chilling and distressing scenes of calculated brutality against women and children.” He called Israel a rogue state, arguing: “Let them pay the price as pariahs with sanctions applied to the state, not just a few ministers.”
Critics have slammed Streeting for hypocrisy, noting he remained in a cabinet that cooperated with Israel even while holding these private beliefs. But the leak itself signals a key political shift: Streeting calculates that taking a hard line against Israel will benefit his campaign, a calculation rooted in his own 2024 election experience, where he held Ilford North by fewer than 600 votes against a pro-Palestine independent challenger.
This shift reflects broader pressure across the party: grassroots Labour members are far more critical of Israel than the parliamentary party, with a June 2025 poll finding nine out of ten rank-and-file members believe the UK should take a much harder line against Israel than the current government. Once the contest begins, all candidates will face intense pressure from members to publicly address Starmer’s handling of Gaza, a record marked by inconsistency and criticism from the left.
Under Starmer, the UK has conducted at least 518 spy flights over Gaza during Israel’s campaign, sharing intelligence with Israel despite government claims the flights were solely for locating hostages. The Starmer government has also permitted British dual nationals to serve in the Israeli military, and approved $169 million in military exports to Israel in the three months after imposing a partial arms embargo — more than the entire volume of military exports approved by the Conservative government between 2020 and 2023. While Starmer broke with previous Tory policy by dropping the UK’s objection to International Criminal Court jurisdiction over Israel, imposing a partial arms embargo, and sanctioning far-right Israeli ministers Itamar Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, he has walked back repeated attempts to label Israeli actions a breach of international law, refused to accuse Israel of war crimes, and allowed the U.S. to use British bases for 2026 strikes on Iran, a move legal experts describe as illegal. Domestically, Starmer’s government outlawed pro-Palestine direct action group Palestine Action as a terrorist organization, arresting thousands of supporters — including many elderly activists — despite a High Court ruling that the ban was unlawful.
All of these policies will be put to the test during the leadership contest, with candidates forced to answer tough questions: Does Israel qualify as an apartheid state? Has it committed genocide in Gaza? Will they continue to support Labour Friends of Israel? Will they ban settlement goods, impose a full arms embargo, reverse the Palestine Action ban, or block U.S. use of British bases for future strikes against Iran?
These questions are not just internal party business. Labour faces growing electoral pressure from the left from the Green Party, which has positioned itself as the leading UK political voice opposing British support for Israel and participation in U.S.-led Middle East wars. Leading pollster John Curtice noted after recent local elections that the Greens have done far more damage to Labour’s vote share than the right-wing Reform Party, with Gaza a top driver of that defection.
The next Labour leader will face a clear choice: double down on Starmer’s strategy of courting right-leaning voters, or shift left to recoup disaffected voters lost to the Greens by returning to Labour’s historic roots of supporting marginalized and occupied populations. Even candidates with long pro-Israel records like Streeting now recognize that taking a harder line on Israel is politically beneficial, as his leaked texts make clear.
The end result is inevitable: whoever wins the contest will rewrite Britain’s Israel policy. Even if Starmer survives his current leadership crisis, he will likely be forced to adjust his stance to shore up support from the party’s left. For Labour, a break from Starmer’s approach is not just morally necessary, it is politically smart, argues Burgon: “Sanctioning Israel to bring the government into line with its legal obligations under international law would not only be the right thing to do, it would also be popular. And if Labour under a new leader wants to convince people it has genuinely changed, then such a clear break with the failures of the Starmer era on Gaza will be essential.”