At long last, the UK is changing course on Israel
Chris Doyle writes in Middle East Eye on 30 September 2026:
In a dramatic speech in Liverpool this week, British Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband told the annual Labour Party conference that those fighting for Palestinian justice had been right. He and his colleagues repeated the message at events across the Merseyside city. ”I want to say to the millions of people in this country, and indeed elsewhere who have been moved and outraged by the plight of the Palestinian people, we hear you,” Miliband said. “You were right.”
It was hugely appreciated, helping to further drain the poison that had affected the entire Labour leadership’s relationship with its base, and the wider country, over the past three years.
The issue of Palestine has become demonstrably less toxic. As an advocate for Palestinian rights, it feels strange to be able to engage freely with ministers. For the last three years, under both Conservative and Labour governments, civil society organisations – aside from groups openly associated with Israel – have almost all opposed British policy. I have attended meetings with senior political figures from both parties, alongside human rights groups and aid agencies – and we have left feeling gaslit. Ministers and officials dodged direct questions, or claimed that it was all very complex. Some of the people in the room, like myself, had worked on the issue of Palestine for several decades, but were apparently incapable of understanding the inner dimensions of what was going on.
Doors and minds open
As far as I can determine, as someone involved with many civil society groups, Miliband was the first foreign secretary in three years to meet with leaders of aid agencies and human rights organisations on Palestine at the Foreign Office. Imagine: the very groups whose workers on the ground were delivering lifesaving aid in Gaza, while putting their own lives on the line, were ignored. That has changed. Ministerial doors, and minds, are now open.
Over the past three years, millions of protesters have marched for justice for Palestinians in British cities and elsewhere, in events that have been collectively smeared as “antisemitic hate marches”. Here, too, Miliband struck a different tone when asked in a media interview about the ban on Palestine Action; he admitted something was wrong when it led to criminalising vicars and grannies.