Why Ed Miliband is taking on Israel

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0:22Hello and welcome to Coffeehouse Shots, the Spectator's daily politics podcast. I'm Oscar Edmundson and I'm joined today by James Heal and our very own Middle East expert, Michael Stevens. Now, this morning we've had Ed Miliband's first big intervention as Foreign Secretary and it concerns the West Bank, the contested space between Israel and Palestine. We understand that the UK is set to announce a trade ban on Israeli settlements in the West Bank and this comes as Israel plans to develop 1 ,200 new homes in that area. we should stress that all Israeli settlements in the West Bank are illegal under international law.

0:57But this does signal a huge change in our policy towards Israel. Michael, I understand that these settlements are a particular area of interest of yours, so can you sketch out some of the detail for us? Certainly, and I think that the framework behind all this is that this is probably an idea in UK-Israel relations, and I don't think we've seen it quite this bad, and rhetoric between government ministers going back and forward. and I wouldn't call it threats, but certainly escalating to the point where things are not looking good. And that's been building for a while. But I think under the Burnham government, it really has accelerated.

1:31My understanding is that the Foreign Secretary, Ed Miliband, really believes in this and is driving this forward. And that is not contrary to government advice, actually. He's pushing on a slightly open door. And that might not be a surprise for some of your readers that the Arabist core in the FCDO is quite strong. There is, I wouldn't call it a latent sympathy for Palestine, but certainly a world in which that view is seen as quite important and legitimate. The Foreign Secretary, I think, has asked for a raft of these measures to be put in place. And that has led to the announcement that we had today.

2:09And I can see problems ahead. And obviously, like in the United States, the debate about Israel and Palestine seems to be splitting along ideological left-right divisions. I think this is part of the Americanisation of our politics, unfortunately. I've seen it coming over the last 20 years. But it's also a product of how polarised the narrative has become post the Hamas atrocities of October 7th, 2023. But I do think that there is a technical aspect here where these settlements do need to be slightly divorced from all the violence that has taken place over the last three years. They are illegal under international law.

2:46And most of the outposts, which are these sort of caravans on hilltops, are illegal under Israeli law. And yet they persist. And I think that there is a belief in the UK that this movement is causing problems not just for Palestinians, but for Israel, and destroying the hope of a two-state solution, which is the policy of this government, and that something needs to be done about that. Now, is it constructive? Tom Tugendhat doesn't seem to think so. But the received wisdom of most Middle East experts is that something did need to be done, that the settlement movement was becoming increasingly violent, unstable, and breaking free from its traditional roots into something far more radical.

3:25And James, turning to the politics of all this, there's been some even on the Labour side that are saying this is virtue signalling politics, but it maybe does track with the mood of public opinion when it comes to Israel and Gaza. It was quite striking that before he took office, one of the things that Andy Burnham wanted to signal some clear blue water on was suggesting that the Labour Party had made a mistake in its handling of the Israel relationship. I think everyone in the Labour Party remembers the disastrous LBC interview that Keir Starmer gave shortly after the events of the 7th of October 2023, which was played back to him endlessly by voters seeking to siphon off elements of the so-called Muslim vote over the past couple of years or so.

4:05So I think he wanted to very much signal that. And he has now chosen this as his first big political battle. And yesterday he became the second shorter serving prime minister when he had his 49th and 50th days in office. And so he's made it through that 50 days, actually, by doing kind of quick wins, easy stuff. Yes, he's had the row around PC Andrew Harper and his killers, but ultimately that was about process. And frankly, no one's going to say, actually, we should let this guy out earlier. But this really is the first big political battle. I think he's now getting some internal flack from people like Labour Friends of Israel, but also obviously the opponents and people like Tom Tuganat making his first intervention as shadow foreign secretary.

4:38I think this is something which matters a huge amount to people in the Labour Party, not just Burnham with the signal, but also with Ed Miliband. Ed Miliband, of course, wrote a column on this a few weeks ago. He was the first Jewish leader of the Labour Party. He was the first leader to back a Palestinian state in 2014. He and his team feel he has some capital in the bank. And we're already seeing the predictable left-right split on this and obviously the Americanisation, which Michael talked about. And you're seeing people like Mike Huckersby, who is the US ambassador to Israel, saying that Britain is guilty of Jew hate.

5:06Now, obviously, Ed Miliband is Jewish. Ed Miliband would describe himself as a Zionist. But what Ed Miliband would stop short of would be embracing the Israeli settlements that have been going on. So we now have the sanctions which are going to be announced on the settlements this afternoon. And I think the key question is, as Michael says, how effective are they going to be? Because they only apply to goods, not services. And there's the challenge about how do you apply them to places which are Israeli occupied in the West Bank, Israeli settlements, rather than is the state of Israel. So there's the whole issue of practicality.

5:34In the last few minutes, it's been reported by Bloomberg that actually British diplomats have been signalling, these aren't going to be as important as you think, let's go on a go slow. And of course, then gets back to the question, well, if they're not going to be effective, is this simply virtue signalling? Are we potentially damaging ties to the Israeli government, given we cooperate on things such as diplomacy and security, lots of information, back channels, etc? Are we putting that at risk? The other point that some of the foreign office fear is saying, look, we're going to have an Israeli election in a matter of weeks.

6:01Could we just not wait a bit to see how this all pans out? But those pushing for these sanctions would point out that there are signs which suggest the Netanyahu government has been accelerating the expansion, building up the sort of development there and giving away more permits before the October result. And that therefore will make it much harder to roll back from that. So it's a question of timing and a question also about effectiveness as well. I think, I mean, I'll just come in on that. The dynamics of the Israeli election are very interesting in this, because at the moment, Israeli politicians are doing what they always do, which is blaming each other for the failures of their state in a very vocal and Israeli way.

6:36Everybody apparently in the political class and the military class is responsible for October the 7th, 2023, according to each particular party's view. Now, you could pick a fight with this government because they might not be here in six weeks. And I think politically, that has certainly been a factor in the way in which the British have approached this. So you have a situation where an outgoing government is looking at its polling, that's Netanyahu's government, and realising that they're in a real dogfight. They probably, on current trajectory, will not win that election. and you can afford to sort of say, well, you know what, we did give them a bit of a kick as they went out the door.

7:13We did the right thing morally. If Gaddy Eisenkot were to win the election, there could be the chance of a reset. And it's quite an easy one to make that reset at the moment because every Israeli politician is trying to kind of out muscle each other in a sort of bicep flexing period, I don't see any give and take from a politician that would either give ground on the settlement movement or to say we would push towards a Palestinian state. But you never know when the results pan out, how that then might materialise. I think the thing is important is to say this, that the Foreign Secretary believes in what he's doing.

7:52Why he's calculated that this is the most effective time to do it is, I think, more related to Andy Burnham than it is the Israelis. But the optics look good. The optics look good in his party. They look good basically to anyone from kind of the centre-right leftwards. And so this is not an unpopular move in the United Kingdom. And when someone like Gideon Sarr says Israel will respond, the first reaction in the UK is, yes, okay, we have security ties that we would do not want to prejudice that do help us. But ultimately, what else can the Israelis do? This isn't going to be that damaging. Maybe they'll put some rhetoric in between Javier Mellay and some sort of quasi push for the Falklands, but it's not serious.

8:35And so I think that the risks that have been calculated are fairly minimal, made easier by the fact that, as I said, these government which will have to come out stridently defending the settlement movement may not be there in six weeks. And I would say to contextual points as well, I think the calculation within the Labour government is they believe they're moving with a grain of public opinion on this. You would cite opinion polls suggesting that particularly this Netanyahu government has overreached in terms of its international position and the support of international allies. And second of all, the context of Europe as well, where there are increasingly countries around Europe trying to do similar sanctions on the Israeli settlements.

9:10And of course, the European Union has the question about do they pursue this as a trade question or a foreign question? So a foreign affairs question, you need universal support across the EU. If it's a trade question, it's one of a qualified majority voting. If the EU formally wants to put trade sanctions on the Israeli settlements, I think it makes up something like 31.7 % of all Israel's trade as a collective EU bloc. And so they will say, look, we're just doing what other countries do. Now, the question is, of course, I think as well, the United States, that is a more interesting part. And some elements of that US government are very keen to get involved.

9:42There's sort of online people on X. Maybe I've got two Twitter feed in my brain. But what's interesting, though, is that those points in the UK are being amplified more by reformed voices. people are Richard Tice, you know, Lance Forman, who's a former Brexit Party MVP, rather than the Conservatives, etc. And I think if the Conservatives want to attack, that they need to do this through their own lens of national security, rather than seeming to echo some of the US talking points on this. It's very important to note that Chris Philp, who is pretty hawkish, has come out and said, we don't think this is a great idea, but settlements are illegal.

10:13It's not a position I expected the Tory party to immediately take, given that they generally sort of pan towards a pro-Israel view at the moment. That was interesting to me because it shows that the Tory party do not want to be seen to be on the wrong side of public opinion on the issue. Reform, for what it's worth, I'm not sure their domestic support base is too concerned about their position on Israel, if I'm honest. I just want to pick up this issue about the US because obviously Mike Huckabee has said that our government is guilty of Jew hatred, which I think is extremely hyperbolic. Funny enough, only a couple of weeks ago, Mike Huckabee called some of these settlers terrorists himself when he saw how they were attacking Palestinian Americans in the West Bank.

10:55So I think he's bifurcating his own position on this to the point where I think it's unsustainable. The question is, will the US government punish us as a result of what the government has announced today? And I suspect that there cannot be a sustained policy by this US government against us for what we have done on Israel. The rhetoric in the US is shifting. If Trump is perceived to be doing Israel's bidding, that is not going down well with his base, because the Iran war has been seen as a failure. Especially heading towards midterms. Absolutely. And the Democrats are falling over themselves right now to criticise Israel.

11:31So I'm of the opinion that it's probably not as damaging as it could have been even a year ago. I think also two things, one of which is Burnham, by not being Keir Starmer, has a different view on this. I think Keir Starmer had to come in and because of domestic anti-Semitism, had to talk about Israel and respond to the horrors of 7th of October in a certain way, which maybe Burnham doesn't feel he feels he has to. I'd also make the point that I think that Netanyahu's rhetoric at times, I think he was quoted as calling the United Kingdom the Islamic Republic a few weeks ago, has really alienated a lot of mainstream opinion.

12:01And I would make the point that just as we're seeing, for good or for ill, firewalls across Europe in the context of AFD this week coming down, I would say that attitudes are probably going to shift looking at elements of the polling in terms of people coming up in America and the UK in terms of how we perceive our relationship with Israel. And I think that some of those traditional ties have been strained potentially to the point of breaking point, particularly over this handling of the war for the past three years and what's happened in Iran as well. Yeah, look, I would say Israeli policy towards Britain has not been smart.

12:32So you had Amichai Chikli, who is the, I think, the migration and aliyah and diaspora minister, basically getting close to Tommy Robinson. This put many Jewish organizations in a very difficult position, most of whom want nothing to do with anybody associated with Tommy Robinson. You know, so the Board of Deputies of British Jews immediately distanced themselves from the Israeli government's rhetoric. So even for Jewish organizations in this country, it has been a really wild ride in terms of, you know, the fact that there is rising anti-Semitism. We cannot deny that the Jewish community here is under threat.

13:09But the Israeli government does not make it easy by choosing some of its friends and allies at the moment. And that is putting great tension on, you know, Jewish communities here, many of whom don't particularly like what the settlers do, but also don't want to see Israel constantly vilified and as a result, their own safety. being undermined. This is a really difficult lock to unpick, I have to say. And there are so many competing threads of our domestic politics versus international politics versus the fact that the Middle East region is just in turmoil and has been for three years. And our key interests, particularly in the oil producing states, are being quite threatened.

13:46So Miliband has taken this decision. Let's see where it goes. Yeah, absolutely. I think one of the things that's lost in this discussion sometimes, we talk about it just through the lens of Israel and purely through you know america um but actually obviously the gulf states have been pretty angry with some of what we've been doing you know we think of our relationships with those monarchies in those areas they've not been particularly impressed obviously they don't share much with hamas and think that things like hezbollah are a threat in the region etc but that is something that people who are more of them are pro-arabis wing or people who have ties to those those countries the police are making to me is that say hang on a sec guys like you know it's not just about israel we stand with israel no matter what we can't give a blank checks we're also alienating traditional relationships where we have huge investments and huge security ties as well.

14:25Well, let's segue onto something a little bit closer to home then, James, because we do have a new batch of PISA scores out. What are PISA scores, first of all, and what are they telling us? Well, international rankings for schools. This is the results for the Programme for International Students Assessment and every year countries around the world are rated in them. And it turns out we've got a good news note to end on, which is that England is now in the top 10 in all three areas reading maths and science and it's the second highest performing country outside of East Asia after Estonia. So, I mean, this is one of the rare examples of the past 10, 15 years, a huge public policy success.

14:58I'm going to sound sycophantic because, of course, it was our editor who did a lot of the school reforms. But I've been playing a game today, Oscar, which is, will Lucy Powell acknowledge this? And it's now, just after midday, a huge set of great results. And the education sector is yet to pay tribute and explain why we're doing so much better in English schools in reading maths and science. Outrageous. It's quite something. But, of course, the downside is, for this good note, is that we've had devolution, got a natural experiment in the three other parts of the United Kingdom. And Wales and Scotland have gone down a different route.

15:25They focus on 21st century skills. England is outperforming both, and Northern Ireland with its grammar schools. And so there's a lot of backlash already in the Scottish press saying, hang on a sec, Nicola Sturgeon in 2015 was saying, I want to be judged on education. This is the results. And frankly, it does seem like it's going to be one of the main success stories of the past 14 years of Conservative government. And it's no surprise to see Laura Trott out there celebrating these results. And I suspect the Conservatives will try to make this a key talking point, potentially at PMQs tomorrow.

15:52But it will certainly be something that they show, shows the good that they think they can do in government. And well done to all those kids who get the good results. Great. Well, good news for Britain. Good news for Michael Gove. Good news for Alex Burghardt, who I think is taking PMQs tomorrow. And good news for listeners. Thank you very much, James. Thank you, Michael. And thank you for listening.

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