Britain wrote Israel’s birth certificate. In 1917, Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour promised the Zionist movement a “national home” in Palestine. For a century, London treated that promise as a debt owed. Margaret Thatcher courted Israeli leaders as fellow Cold Warriors. Tony Blair stood “shoulder to shoulder” with Washington and Jerusalem after 9/11. Even Keir Starmer, whatever his private doubts, moved cautiously on Gaza. Andy Burnham broke that pattern. He didn’t just criticise Israel. He apologized for not criticising it sooner.
The apology
Burnham became prime minister on July 20, 2026, succeeding Starmer without a general election. Ten days before he took office, he recorded a video that Westminster still talks about. He called the “unbearable suffering” in Gaza “a scar on our collective conscience.” He admitted Labor “didn’t get it right” and said the UK “was too slow to call for a ceasefire.”
He stopped short of the word genocide. He didn’t need to go further. The apology alone signaled a break from 70 years of British deference to Israeli security arguments. Burnham promised something rarer than sympathy: consequences. He flagged “further restrictions on arms exports and action against illegal West Bank settlements.”
That promise now collides with reality.
From words to a trade war
In June 2026, more than 140 Labour MPs, nearly a third of the parliamentary party, wrote to the then-foreign secretary demanding a full trade ban on Israeli settlement goods. The signatories included every Labour select committee chair. Their letter didn’t mince words. It called Israel’s plan to displace the Bedouin community of Khan al-Ahmar a potential “war crime of forcible transfer.” Lead signatory Melanie Ward put it bluntly: “It’s time to be clear that settlements have no viable economic future.”
Israel didn’t back down. It answered the letter with bulldozers. In August, it opened bidding for 1,200 new settler homes in the E1 corridor, the strip of land that would sever East Jerusalem from the rest of the West Bank. Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband didn’t mince words either. “All settlements damage that prospect and are a flagrant breach of international law,” he said, reaffirming British opposition to E1 and support for a two-state solution. Burnham now weighs a full import ban on settlement goods. Polling suggests half the country would back him.
Israel’s answer: Expulsion
Israel escalated first. It didn’t wait for London’s next move. In late August, the ‘Financial Times’ reported that Israel is considering expelling British officials from the International Gaza Support Center, the US-led headquarters in Kiryat Gat that coordinates the postwar ceasefire. Israel had already expelled Dutch representatives days earlier, after the Netherlands banned settlement goods outright. Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar accused the Dutch of fuelling “an unprecedented wave of anti-Semitism and boycotts.” Spain lost its seat at the center earlier this year, accused of “obsessive anti-Israel bias.”
Britain isn’t panicking. British officials told the ‘Financial Times’ they consider expulsion “logical” and even expect it as “payback”. They say they aren’t worried. That calm may be bravado. Losing a seat at the table that shapes Gaza’s future is not a minor diplomatic slight. It’s exclusion from the room where the war’s aftermath gets written.
Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has pushed this fight further than most. He wants the coordination center shut down entirely, and he wants Britain and Egypt gone from it, calling both countries “hostile to Israel” and a threat to its security. That a sitting Israeli cabinet minister names Britain, once Israel’s foundational patron, as a security threat, marks the scale of the rupture.
Washington’s opposite bet
Here’s where Burnham’s strategic vise tightens. While London threatens sanctions, Washington shields Israel from a different set of enemies entirely. The Trump administration has sanctioned six International Criminal Court officials this year alone, including the court’s sitting president, Tomoko Akane, for supporting arrest warrants against Netanyahu. Secretary of State Marco Rubio called the ICC “corrupt and fatally politicised.” Trump signed the underlying executive order in February 2025, built specifically to punish anyone who investigates Israeli officials.
Trump even praised Burnham personally, on North Sea oil policy, days after he took office. The compliment reveals the trap. Washington will work with Burnham where interests align. It will not follow him on Israel. The alliance that Blair treated as sacred now pulls in the opposite direction from Burnham’s Gaza policy, on the single issue that matters most to his own backbenchers.
The choice ahead
Burnham faces three forces that don’t reconcile. Labour’s grassroots and a third of his own MPs demand harder action. Israel answers every step with retaliation, real or threatened. Washington protects Israel from the very mechanisms, sanctions, courts, expulsions, that give British pressure any teeth. A full settlement trade ban would mark the sharpest British break from Israel since 1948. It would also risk permanent exclusion from Gaza’s postwar architecture, at precisely the moment Britain wants a voice in shaping it. Balfour promised Israel a homeland with no risk to London. Burnham inherited a Britain that can no longer promise support without cost. The question is whether he has the nerve to pay it.
- The writer is a prominent news anchor, programme presenter and media instructor.