Clive Lewis: “I am ashamed” of Labour re Gaza
JVL Introduction
Labour MP Clive Lewis has written this heartfelt and angry letter to Keir Starmer; it is the least we expect of our MPs, especially Labour ones. Within it he notes “our government issues statements distilled into sound bites. But we are not using the tools available to us: an arms embargo, economic sanctions, and international accountability. When history is written – and it will be – what will it say of us? Of you?” (My emphasis LL)
We see an example of a Labour Minister talking as though she, and the whole government, was powerless, on BBC’s Question Time (watch from 56 minutes in until 58’10”). In much the same anguish and fury as here, the audience member feels compelled to interrupt Heidi Alexander’s apparent anguish with cries of “Do Something!”
History may judge our leaders as harshly as they deserve but it is already too late for tens of thousands of Palestinians.
LL
This article was originally published by Labour Outlook on Mon 2 Jun 2025. Read the original here.
Gaza: “I am ashamed of what is & is not being done” – Clive Lewis writes to Keir Starmer over Gaza policy
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Clive Lewis is no fool and genuinely feels what he wrote to Starmer. But the Prime Minister represents Israel First in the United Kingdom. His allegiance to US Atlanticism and the long colonial history of British Imperialism and subjugation of native peoples across the globe. He knows exactly about the Palestinian holocaust. He has made the British State a key participant in mass murder and support for the occupation. He will never change, nor his willing accomplice David Lamby. If Clive Lewis resigned the Labour Whip and his membership of the Party, he would show courage, his principled stand and credibility, and support for justice in Palestine, by joining those Independent voices in Parliament. I would hope that Zara Sultana and others would resign too from the morally bankrupt Labour Party.
Starmer won’t change course unless he has to – let’s hope the mounting pressures force him to cave in.
The latest opinion poll (You Gov) has 67% voters opposing, 12% supporting the Labour government and its actions. Starmer’s policies on Gaza and Israel are one source of his government’s unpopularity. Support for Labour has never been so low. It’s dived still further in the month since the local elections.
Then there’s events in the wider world.
The Irish government has very recently declared that Israel is engaged on genocide. Australia is said to be on the brink of doing the same. Macron promised earlier that France would recognise the State of Palestine this week. Spain stopped today (?) an arms shipment to Israel worth billions of euros. The EU is considering whether to discontinue its preferential trade deal with Israel, on the grounds that Israel fails to respect human rights.
OK Neil this is also courage for Clive Lewis to write the letter. He would have been expelled from the party a few months ago for less than this. He and others have chipped away at the N.Korea style control Starmer has imposed on Labour since he slid into leadership, a path greased by lies and false promises. Or were they pledges or missions or priorities or aims or whatever or who gives a toss? Yes, resignation would have more impact especially if a significant number joined him in resigning, but I respect him for what he does and attempts. I see it is part of the pressure building up for a change of leader but accept Gaza and the rest of Palestine need something a lot quicker, such as sending in our ‘brave boys’ along with the ‘coalition of the willing”.
Labour and NATO are entwined within the same imperialist machine. It was a Labour government under Clement Attlee that helped found NATO in 1949—an alliance explicitly designed to push back against the expansion of socialism from the Soviet Union and entrench American military presence in Europe. Since then, Labour has backed every imperialist war and never once questioned Britain’s role in NATO, not even under Corbyn, whose “anti-war” stance vanished the moment it challenged party unity.
It follows that the trade unions tethered to Labour are just as complicit. The TUC supported NATO intervention in Yugoslavia and Libya, and today many unions pass motions backing Britain’s arming of Ukraine. Sharon Graham’s Unite has gone further. Calling for more military production under the guise of “defending jobs.” This isn’t defence; it’s war profiteering dressed up as workers’ rights.
The entire Labour-union-NATO axis is a betrayal of the working class. Their loyalty lies not with peace or safety of the workers as Stamer professes it to be, but with British imperialism and all its facets.
I’ve admired Clive Lewis’s politics for many years, and voted for him when he stood for deputy leader and lost in the first round. In any talented Labour party he’d be in the Cabinet! As well as – or part of – his socialism, he has worked for a better electoral system.
Some of the comments above are mistaken. Yes, Attlee /Bevin DID support setting up NATO (a fact I have mentioned frequently) but No, Labour has not ‘always supported every imperialist war’ – Wilson refused to join the Americans in Vietnam, the Labour Party was solidly against Suez, and even Blair stopped arms to Israel after the invasion of Lebanon.
This shows that Starmer and his sycophants have not always been the only ‘Labour’ on offer. Living in Holborn & St Pancras I’ve seen the horror of the Starmtroopers in action and I left their party with relief, but that doesn’t mean everyone has to go. I was really pissed off to hear Zack Polanski say (twice!) that the Greens are going to stand candidates against Clive Lewis.
Ccp, I think the majority of unions and their members backed a permanent ceasefire in Gaza and an end to the occupation long before most of the UK population adopted that stance.
I support Clive Lewis’s letter to the PM. The cynical brutality with which a Zionist led Israel is pulverising the Palestinian people is being played out in full view of the world. I share is frustration and sense of powerlessness (on which the current Israeli strategy thrives). Whilst the narrative about suffering is not entirely in Israeli hands, the narrative about the treatment of Palestinians over the past 75 years largely remains dominated by the Israeli insistence on its “right to defend itself” and the anti-semitism of its critics. This control must be broken.
In its place the factual story of the Zionist-led seizure of the land once inhabited by Palestinians of all persuasions over 80 years ago, their subsequent expulsion from their own homes followed by decades of coercion and control by Israel in both the occupied West Bank and Gaza is the one that must allow the violent attack led by Hamas to be understood in context.
A secular Palestine “from the river to the sea” in which respect for human rights (including child rights as set out in the UNCRC) and therefore a respect for the right to a religion or no religion forms the basis of a mature approach by humanity to a “problem” that will not be resolved from the barrel of a gun or a bomb from a drone.
It is utterly shocking that as desperate, hungry people in Gaza, members of LFI, including Luciana Berger, recently ennobled by Starmer, despite having previously stood against Labour candidates, are on a jolly to Israel.
Deeds not words indeed.
Linda, do you mean unions like Unite, whos leader was all on board with banning that film about Corbyn, a very mild social democrat, being shown ?