For the sake of the UK, a new PM must avoid Starmer’s Gaza mistakes
Mona Deeley writes in The New Arab on 16 June 2026:
The resignations of Defence Secretary John Healey and Armed Forces Minister Al Carns have hastened the demise of the Premiership of Keir Starmer. As Britain looks towards a new Prime Minister, their credibility will be tested by whether they are prepared to reverse the erosion of democracy and the rule of law.
Elections are only one component of a democratic system. Its health depends on human rights and legal protections being upheld without exception and enforced through effective checks on power. A recent report by the UK NGO Reform Initiative for Transparent Economies (RITE), The War on Palestine and the Decline of Democracy and the Rule of Law, draws on a series of legal cases to expose attacks on fundamental rights abroad and at home, and reveal how some of democracy’s structural foundations have been compromised.
Aspiring and sitting UK Prime Ministers should act on the fact that opinion polls consistently show a majority of the British public are supportive of Palestinian rights. The public’s views, unlike government policy, are in line with the position at law.
Successive UK governments have refused to use Britain’s trade, military and diplomatic leverage to press Israel to comply with its obligations under international law. Instead, UK policy has been at odds with two landmark International Court of Justice (ICJ) opinions from 2024: one in January triggering a duty to prevent genocide in Gaza, and another in July reaffirming the obligation of all states to help bring Israel’s illegal occupation of the Palestinian Territories to an end.
Government policy is also in tension with findings of war crimes by the International Court of Justice (ICC). Prosecutor Karim Khan said that he was threatened by then Foreign Secretary David Cameron with pulling the UK out of the ICC if he issued arrest warrants against the Israeli Prime Minister and then Minister of Defence. The current UK government has continued its cooperation with the government of a Prime Minister wanted by the ICC.