David Lammy went off-script last night, declaring in the Commons that Israel had committed “a breach of international law” by blocking humanitarian aid from entering Gaza for the past two weeks. He told MPs:
“This is a breach of international law. Israel quite rightly must defend its own security. But we find the lack of aid – it’s now been 15 days since aid got into Gaza – unacceptable, hugely alarming and very worrying. We would urge Israel to get back to the amount of trucks we were seeing – way beyond 600 – so Palestinians can get the necessary humanitarian support that they need at this time.”
That’s the first time a UK official has outright accused Israel of breaking international law since the conflict began. But this morning, Number 10 slapped him down. Starmer’s spokesman told hacks that the government’s position remains that Israel’s actions are at risk of breaching international law. When pressed on whether Lammy had misspoken (he did admit to being jet lagged), Downing Street doubled down saying the FCDO’s position remains unchanged. A clear rebuke…
Green Deputy Leader Rachel Millward said:
“The reality is that it’s Zack Polanski who brought the nation, Andy Burnham. And if we hadn’t had the success of the Green Party in this last year since Zack’s been leading, which has been unprecedented, phenomenal success and a growth from about 60,000 members to 230,000, if we hadn’t had that much pressure on Labour, then we’d probably still be in the Starmer regime, which was pretty much ushering in a Reform government with its lurch to the right. So actually, what we’re seeing now is that we’ve set the political agenda and the government is picking that up.”