Andy Burnham is preparing the first significant change in British policy toward Israel since becoming prime minister: a ban on trade with Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, accompanied by further sanctions against individuals involved in settlement expansion. The immediate occasion is Israel’s decision to issue construction tenders for about 1,200 homes in E1, the strategically important tract east of Jerusalem that Britain and numerous other governments argue would drive a wedge through the West Bank and further obstruct the creation of a territorially contiguous Palestinian state. Burnham has joined the leaders of France, Germany, Italy, Canada, the Netherlands, and other countries in demanding that Israel reverse course; his government is now planning measures considerably more tangible than another diplomatic protest. More than 140 Labour MPs have already called for a prohibition on settlement trade, while the parliamentary group Labour Friends of Israel warns that distinguishing transactions implicating settlements from broader trade with Israel may be so difficult as to make the move effectively a wider boycott. Burnham is reportedly inclined to proceed—and, not insignificantly, to do so before next month’s Labour Party conference.
The scale of the change requires some disentangling, since governments, lobbyists, opposition groups, and activists all have reasons for framing things to suit their particular purposes. Under Keir Starmer, the previous prime minister, Britain’s policy toward Israel had already traveled a considerable distance. By the end of his premiership, the government had recognized a Palestinian state, restricted some arms exports to Israel, suspended negotiations on a new trade agreement, imposed four packages of sanctions against settlers and settler organizations, sanctioned two Israeli ministers, and explicitly advised British businesses against economic or financial activity in settlements. Nevertheless, Starmer preserved a reasonably clear line: His government opposed settlement commerce while insisting that Britain should continue to “distinguish and protect” trade with Israel itself. A legal prohibition would in practice cross that line. Advice would become compulsion, and sanctions directed principally at selected people and organizations would extend to an entire category of commerce.
This is therefore an escalation of an existing policy rather than the invention of a new one, and E1 supplies the government with an entirely conventional explanation for it. Britain has opposed the project for years. The latest international statement signed by Burnham describes the development as damaging the territorial contiguity necessary for a two-state settlement and warns businesses against participating in it. There are also practical difficulties, which officials have duly discovered: tracing the origin of goods and services can be complicated; Palestinian enterprises could suffer along with Israeli ones; and a narrowly conceived prohibition may prove less narrow in application. These objections may be sound. They also bring with them a political argument in which almost everybody has an interest in deciding how far the restrictions should extend—and in explaining why their preferred stopping point happens to be the right one.
Behind these immediate calculations lies one of the more burdensome domestic political inheritances Burnham received from Starmer: the latter’s handling of Israel and Gaza. The former prime minister’s remarks in an LBC interview shortly after October 7, in which he appeared to accept Israel’s right to withhold power and water from Gaza, provoked intense opposition within parts of Labour and among many Muslim voters; Starmer subsequently said that he had been referring to Israel’s right of self-defense rather than to the withholding of essential supplies, although by then the original formulation had acquired the independent political existence that unfortunate remarks tend to acquire once opponents discover a use for them. Over the following years government policy moved substantially—toward a ceasefire, restrictions on arms licenses, recognition of Palestine, sanctions against settlers and Israeli ministers, and increasingly severe criticism of Netanyahu’s government. But among a substantial body of Muslim and progressive voters, Starmer became identified with Labour’s initial position on Gaza before his later policies could revise the association.
The electoral damage to Labour has been substantial. Labour received an estimated 80 percent of Muslim votes in 2019 and 56 percent in 2024; by early 2026 its support among Muslim voters stood at 33 percent, while Green support had reached 30 percent. In areas with particularly large Muslim populations, Labour’s position was considerably worse. Gaza seems to have contributed to a much wider erosion of Labour support among younger and progressive voters. By early 2026 the scale of that erosion had become striking: One YouGov poll put Green support among 18-to-24-year-olds at 45 percent, while around a fifth of Labour’s 2024 voters were telling pollsters they had moved to the Greens. Gaza was by no means the sole cause of the movement, but an Opinium survey of Labour voters defecting to progressive parties found that 67 percent of those moving to the Greens regarded Labour’s position on Gaza as a factor in their decision. Burnham appears already to have recovered some of the lost ground: by August, YouGov put Labour support among 18-to-24-year-olds at 25 percent, up from 14 percent in June.
The figures are volatile, but the political calculation is not especially mysterious. Labour has lost large numbers of younger voters to a party occupying a position to its left on Gaza, a substantial proportion of the defectors themselves say Gaza helped drive the decision, and some have already shown themselves willing to return under a different Labour leader. Political parties can endure the disapproval of people who would never vote for them with considerable equanimity. Recoverable former supporters demand more concentrated attention.
Burnham has handled this inheritance with some dexterity. During the leadership contest he apologized for Labour’s response to Gaza, saying that the party “didn’t get it right” and had been too slow to call for a ceasefire, while simultaneously praising the recognition of Palestine, sanctions, and arms restrictions introduced under Starmer. The arrangement could hardly be more convenient. Burnham inherits the latter policy while leaving much of the political liability accumulated during its formation with his predecessor. This does not make the apology insincere; Burnham may believe every word of it. Politics merely becomes considerably easier when conviction and differentiation from an unpopular predecessor arrive at the same destination.
The settlement ban would give that differentiation material form while allowing Burnham to decide where it stops. He has declined to pronounce Israel’s conduct in Gaza genocide, leaving the determination to international courts; he has neither endorsed a general boycott of Israel nor accepted demands for a complete arms embargo. (Momentum, Labour & Palestine, the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy, and the Palestine Solidarity Campaign will press for all or some of these measures at the Labour conference.)
Burnham’s decision to move toward a settlement ban while resisting broader sanctions has opened a small but revealing contest over who gets credit for the change. Burnham has an interest in acting before the conference: A prime minister who announces an initiative on his own authority has changed government policy; a prime minister forced into the same policy by delegates has retreated. The practical result may be identical, but politics has never regarded authorship as merely an incidental detail. Campaigners, conversely, have an interest in establishing that their pressure produced the change, since yesterday’s successful pressure supplies an argument for tomorrow’s. With roughly a third of Labour MPs already supporting a trade ban, Burnham would have to spend political authority to resist a policy he has independent reasons to favor. New prime ministers generally discover enough unavoidable fights without manufacturing additional ones for the pleasure of demonstrating firmness.
The Greens introduce another incentive. Gaza has helped them attract progressive, younger, Muslim, and former Labour voters. A Labour government moving substantially on Israel threatens part of the political territory on which they have advanced. The obvious response is to move the point of differentiation further outward: If Labour prohibits settlement trade, the relevant test becomes a complete arms embargo, broader sanctions, or recognition of genocide. Political parties rarely celebrate a rival’s conversion by conceding that it has removed a reason for voting for them. Of course, none of this speculation requires doubting the convictions involved. Electoral competition has the useful property of making sincerely held convictions strategically serviceable.
Labour’s more pro-Israel voices operate under comparable incentives. Labour Friends of Israel opposes settlement expansion but has reasons to prevent a settlement prohibition from becoming a precedent for wider restrictions on Israel; pro-Palestinian organizations have reasons to establish precisely such a precedent. Burnham also inherits Labour’s experience of antisemitism under Jeremy Corbyn and has longstanding connections with Jewish organizations from his years in Greater Manchester. He has repeatedly condemned Hamas and antisemitism, previously opposed BDS, and appointed James Purnell, a former chair of Labour Friends of Israel, as his Downing Street chief of staff. None of this prevents a tougher policy toward Netanyahu’s government or the settlements; it does suggest the existence of boundaries Burnham has reasons to respect.
Burnham consequently faces several constituencies rather than two camps. Foreign policy occasionally allows prime ministers to rise above domestic politics; Israel–Palestine, with impressive reliability, drags them back into it. And so Burnham wants to recover Muslim voters lost over Gaza and younger progressives moving toward the Greens—but he also wants to win over economically interventionist, culturally moderate working-class voters attracted to Reform, many of whom have little affinity with the language or political culture of Palestine activism. Within Labour, he must accommodate a parliamentary party considerably more critical of Israeli policy than it was a decade ago without allowing conference activists to appear to dictate government policy, while addressing concerns about antisemitism without simply inheriting Starmer’s political liabilities over Gaza. Abroad, Burnham must maintain relations with Israel and the United States while showing that British opposition to settlement expansion consists of something more than another expression of British opposition to settlement expansion.
The likely response from Washington adds another calculation. Burnham must satisfy three different audiences: his party, the British electorate, and the United States. A policy that brings political advantages with the first two may create problems for his dealings with the third. In London, the settlement ban brings several serious political advantages; in Washington, almost every one of those advantages looks different. A measure demonstrating independence and responsiveness at home may appear to a strongly pro-Israel American administration as another European attempt to subject Jerusalem to economic pressure. Burnham must therefore calculate not simply what Britain should do about Israeli settlements, but how much advantage gained at home is worth the diplomatic cost potentially incurred abroad.
The distinction between settlements and Israel consequently must perform an unusual amount of work. Burnham needs it domestically because it separates what his government proposes from the broader sanctions demanded by campaigners; within Labour it gives more pro-Israel figures grounds for arguing that the government has not adopted BDS; in Washington it allows Britain to describe the measure as directed against settlement activity rather than Israel. The same distinction can thus be offered to three audiences for three somewhat different purposes. Governments understandably cherish distinctions of such versatility.
The timing makes the calculation particularly delicate. Burnham is expected to meet Donald Trump face-to-face for the first time at the UN General Assembly in September and may subsequently visit Washington. One of his principal objectives will be to secure greater American assistance with air-defence missiles for Ukraine. He therefore proposes to enter his first substantial negotiation with Trump having adopted a policy to which the president may strongly object while simultaneously asking him for something Britain and its European allies badly want. Burnham has found areas in which accommodation with Trump costs him relatively little—his more permissive approach to North Sea oil and gas has been warmly received—and inherited others in which disagreement is unavoidable. Israel now joins the ledger. The important question is not whether Trump will approve the settlement policy; he probably will not. It is whether the disagreement remains confined to Israel or begins to make American cooperation with Britain more expensive elsewhere.
Ukraine makes the question unusually concrete. Burnham’s emerging policy there rests partly on greater British and European strategic responsibility for Ukraine while Kiev continues to depend on American military capabilities Europe cannot readily replace. London can talk about European defense production and strategic autonomy, but Ukrainian air defense still depends on American systems and American decisions. Burnham thus finds himself encouraging greater European independence while preparing to ask Trump for additional American assistance. There is nothing particularly anomalous about this—alliances have always mixed dependence with aspirations to reduce it—but presidential goodwill consequently possesses a value that cannot simply be omitted from Burnham’s calculation about Israel.
If the White House wished to make British policy expensive, it would hardly need to announce retaliation. There is a rich vocabulary for expressing displeasure without establishing a documentary connection between cause and consequence: Trade negotiations could become marginally more difficult, technology disputes somewhat less soluble, access less generous, defense requests less urgent, an intervention on Ukrainian missiles less forthcoming. Britain’s defense, intelligence, and nuclear relationship with the United States makes a serious rupture over settlement commerce improbable; it also makes smaller acts of American unhelpfulness potentially consequential. The “special relationship” increasingly describes not automatic agreement but an unusually dense collection of transactions from which neither side wishes to withdraw.
Burnham must therefore price American displeasure against domestic costs of retreat. If he abandoned a conspicuous settlement policy after objections from Washington, Labour MPs and activists could claim that the promised departure from Starmer had reached its limit as soon as the United States objected; pro-Palestinian organizations would acquire a particularly useful argument about British subordination; and the Muslim and progressive voters Burnham hopes to recover might draw similar conclusions. Accommodating Trump could therefore purchase advantages abroad for a cost at home, while resisting him could reverse the transaction. There is no position from which all the accounts balance.
Nor, again, is Burnham the sole practitioner of political calculation. British pro-Palestinian campaigners can use American opposition to strengthen an argument about British independence. More pro-Israel Labour figures can cite damage to relations with Washington in arguing against wider sanctions. The Greens benefit if Burnham appears constrained by Trump; a Burnham government that successfully resists American pressure deprives them of some of that advantage. What appears to be a bilateral foreign-policy disagreement is simultaneously raw material for several domestic political contests.
A settlement prohibition is therefore unusually useful because different constituencies can understand it differently. Pro-Palestinian campaigners can present it as proof that pressure works and hence as an argument for more pressure. Muslim and Green-inclined voters can treat it as evidence that replacing Starmer has changed something tangible. Labour’s foreign-policy mainstream can describe it as protection of the two-state solution. More pro-Israel Labour figures can insist that the line between settlements and Israel must now be held. Washington can be told that the measure does not constitute a boycott of Israel. The government can emphasize whichever interpretation best suits the audience immediately before it. Political compromises, after all, often depend less upon everyone agreeing on what has been decided than on different participants being able to explain the same decision differently.
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The significance of Burnham’s initiative consequently lies not in a wholesale revision of British policy toward Israel, but in his attempt to establish a new Labour equilibrium before somebody else establishes it for him. Starmer had already moved policy substantially, but never escaped the political consequences of the position with which he began. Burnham starts from Starmer’s later position, repudiates aspects of the earlier one, and proposes to move further while suggesting boundaries around how far he intends to go. Pro-Palestinian organizations want those boundaries moved; more pro-Israel Labour figures want them held; the Greens need enough distance between their position and Labour’s to give defectors a reason not to return; Labour MPs possess constituency, ideological, and career considerations of their own; Washington has interests and constituencies of its own. It would be peculiar if Burnham alone entered this crowded marketplace equipped solely with principle.
Whether the arrangement survives events in Israel, Gaza, and the West Bank is another question. Middle Eastern governments have an inconvenient habit of making British political positioning obsolete before the press release has finished circulating. For the moment, however, circumstances have presented Burnham with the sort of policy choice politicians particularly appreciate: an argument of principle can be made for it; an external development supplies the occasion; a large part of his parliamentary party already wants it; it may help recover voters Labour has lost; and it distinguishes him from an unpopular predecessor. Against these advantages, Burnham must weigh the risk of incurring Washington’s displeasure at precisely the moment he is seeking U.S. help over Ukraine.
None of this should be taken to mean that Burnham, his supporters, or his opponents hold their stated convictions insincerely. Political analysis need not choose between conviction and self-interest quite so obligingly. Governments, parties, pressure groups, and campaigners generally possess both; the more revealing question is why a conviction long held becomes a policy suddenly worth pursuing. For Burnham, the answer appears to have a lot to do with the unusually favorable alignment of principle, party management, electoral repair, and political differentiation—and with his judgment that the resulting American bill, if one arrives, will remain affordable.
