A deepening political firestorm has engulfed the UK Labour Party after former Health Secretary Wes Streeting publicly accused Prime Minister Keir Starmer of dismissing detailed evidence of alleged Israeli war crimes in Gaza, triggering accusations of deception, hypocrisy, and opportunism from across the political and activist spectrum.
In a revealing interview with the News Agents podcast, Streeting, who stepped down from his cabinet post last month, claimed that when he circulated a dossier of testimony collected from British doctors who had worked in Gaza to fellow cabinet members, Starmer immediately questioned his motives, suggesting the move was a deliberate attempt to leak the document for political gain. Streeting pushed back against this characterization, noting that he never released the dossier to the public until this week, when private messages related to the document were made public, undermining Downing Street’s claims that he intended to leak it.
Streeting explained his decision to circulate the dossier by saying he left meetings with visiting British doctors deeply distressed by their accounts, which included serious, credible allegations of widespread war crimes in Gaza. He argued that the United Kingdom holds both a moral and a legal obligation to respond to these allegations, rather than ignoring them. The existence of the dossier first came to light this week, when private messages from Peter Mandelson, the disgraced veteran New Labour figure and former UK ambassador to the US, were published. In the messages, Mandelson, who has long been a mentor to Streeting, dismissed Streeting’s calls for sanctions against Israel over alleged war crimes as “wild” and “hysterical”, further deriding the former health secretary’s initiative as “pathetic” and claiming he was suffering from an early midlife crisis. Cabinet minister Pat McFadden, another centre-right Labour figure aligned with Starmer and Mandelson, confirmed in the messages that Streeting had circulated the dossier and accompanying video footage to the full cabinet ahead of a scheduled meeting.
Since Streeting’s public claims emerged, multiple parties have questioned both the accuracy of his account and his underlying motives, including British Palestinian medical professionals, Labour Party insiders, and Palestine solidarity campaigners. Most notably, Ghassan Abu Sittah, a prominent British Palestinian surgeon who has worked extensively treating casualties in Gaza, has directly refuted Streeting’s claim that he met with British doctors who collected the dossier’s evidence. Abu Sittah stated that neither he nor any British doctor he knows who has served in Gaza has ever met with Streeting, calling the former minister’s claims outright lies. He also condemned Streeting as a core part of the same political apparatus led by Starmer that has enabled what he describes as genocide in Gaza, pointing out that the party has suppressed public outrage and censored dissenting voices over the last two and a half years of the conflict.
Abu Sittah further accused Streeting of pressuring the UK General Medical Council to launch what he called a “McCarthyite witch hunt” against doctors who have publicly spoken out against Israeli actions in Gaza. Streeting, while still serving as Health Secretary, supported new regulatory rules that make it easier for medical watchdogs to suspend or strike off doctors accused of antisemitism or racism over their pro-Palestine advocacy. Abu Sittah himself was reported to the GMC by pro-Israel group UK Lawyers for Israel, though independent tribunals have twice ruled that no disciplinary action is warranted.
Critics also point to longstanding rumors that Streeting is positioning himself for a future leadership challenge to likely successor Andy Burnham, should Burnham win the upcoming Makerfield by-election and mount a challenge to Starmer. Streeting also faced tight re-election in his own Ilford North constituency in 2024, where British Palestinian independent candidate Leanne Mohamad came within just 528 votes of unseating him, driven largely by public anger over Streeting’s pro-Israel stances. Records also show Streeting has received significant campaign donations from prominent pro-Israel figures.
Streeting acknowledged in his interview that Starmer’s controversial LBC interview, in which the prime minister claimed Israel had a right to cut off water and electricity to civilian communities in Gaza, nearly cost him his seat in the 2024 general election. Despite his criticism of Starmer’s slow, insufficient response to the Gaza crisis, Streeting has stopped short of describing Israeli actions in Gaza as genocide, a position that has drawn further criticism from activists. The death toll in Gaza has surpassed 73,000 Palestinians, according to local health authorities, with nearly the entire enclave’s infrastructure destroyed. Streeting told the podcast he rejects the use of the term genocide as an ideological litmus test for concern about Palestinian lives, claiming he has met with survivors of both the October 7 attacks by Hamas and the subsequent Israeli offensive, and that he values the lives of all Israelis and Palestinians equally. He also described Hamas, which is designated as a terrorist organization in the UK, as “evil and vindictive”.
Activist groups have rejected Streeting’s framing, arguing that his belated public criticism is too little, too late, and that his past actions as a cabinet member in Starmer’s government make his current claims disingenuous. Palestine Solidarity Campaign deputy director Peter Leary argued that Streeting should not need a leadership race to find his voice on Israeli atrocities, and that if he is serious about atoning for his role in enabling Israel’s actions, he should back immediate, comprehensive sanctions including a full arms embargo on Israel — a step Streeting has so far refused to take. Nick Dearden, director of Global Justice Now, added that Streeting was a sitting cabinet minister while the humanitarian catastrophe unfolded in Gaza, and that holding private discussions with Starmer is not enough to absolve him; he should either have forced a policy change or resigned immediately in protest. Dearden also noted that Andy Burnham, the likely front-runner to succeed Starmer, has similarly refused to take a clear stance, saying only that he does not know whether genocide is occurring in Gaza.
One former senior Labour official, who has a long record of criticizing Starmer’s leadership, summed up the widespread anger at Streeting, calling him a “lying toad”. As of publication, Middle East Eye has reached out to Streeting’s office for a response to the allegations, but has not received a reply.