Don't trust two-tier Keir on Palestine Action. He hasn't turned sound

Telegraph

21-06-2025

If a mystic with a crystal ball asked you last week to guess which political leader would try to ban a group with 'Palestine' in the name, you'd have plumped for Donald Trump. Turns out, however, it was Keir Starmer.
I speak of Palestine Action, the neo-Corbynite clowns who infiltrated RAF Brize Norton on electric scooters to sabotage strategic aircraft. The Government says it will ban them as terrorists for their trouble. Has the Prime Minster finally gone sound?
Has he heck. The petulant hoodlums will complain that unlike Hamas and the other groups on the list, they weren't trying to bomb anybody. That argument will probably prevail; the ban must win the support of both MPs and peers before coming into force, so it may never materialise.
No, it's all about the headlines. Nigel Farage demanded that Palestine Action be proscribed in the morning and by the afternoon, Starmer had claimed the oxygen for his own. This created the impression that the Government takes our national security seriously, stands against the irritating Gaza radicals and is determined to crack down on treason. No need to vote Reform then, eh?
He's a slippery fish, that prime minister. This is the most unprincipled government in living memory and its playbook is always the same. Wrongfoot and gaslight the public while advancing an agenda that nobody has voted for. Mark my words. After this, Starmer's betrayal of Israel will continue apace.
Take the child sex gangs. The inquiry was a controlled explosion of a political landmine with senior Labour figures protected by spin. Meanwhile, this was Death Week, with infanticide and geronticide, neither of which were in Labour's manifesto, forced through the Commons. Thus the Government emerges as the shadowy winner while the country and its despairing people have lost.
The same pattern can be seen in everything from the economy to immigration and defence. Starmer talks tough, cracks out a little U-turn, then when the heat has passed, pushes on with his agenda, making superficial modifications to throw us off the scent.
Last week, for instance, it emerged that our rising defence budget will also fund Heathrow's third runway, reduce food prices and bolster supply chains. The Prime Minister told us he was serious about defending the realm, but he didn't really mean it.
The Palestine Action episode is the same. This government is now the most Israelophobic since the Fifties. It has suspended arms export licences while continuing to provide them to the repressive regimes of Qatar, Turkey and Egypt.
It has sanctioned objectionable Israeli ministers while leaving far more chauvinistic regional figures untouched. The Tunisian president, for example, demands 'all the land of Palestine' for the Arabs. No two-state solution there. No British sanctions, either.
It has presided over crackdowns on free speech and two-tier policing of the Gaza mobs. Just as sensible voters reach the end of their tether, however, Sir Keir throws sand in their eyes on Palestine Action.
Now it is the turn of his Corbynite Left to feel the burn. But this is nothing more than an exercise in damage limitation; as always, the pendulum will swing back the other way, only – crucially – not as far as its original position. Thus public rage is subdued while the Overton Window creeps inexorably leftwards.
You can feel it, can't you? You know you're being conned but you can't quite put your finger on it. As the months pass, a browbeaten and confused electorate finds the country drifting away beneath its feet, little by little becoming unrecognisable.