Burnham arms Israel despite Gaza deaths
Two Gaza families were killed days after a new ceasefire deal. Burnham apologised for Labour's Gaza record, but his government keeps arming, spying for and legitimising Israel.
Abdullah Abu Taif was 33. His wife, Abeer Anan, was 29 and pregnant. Their son Azzam was five. An Israeli strike on the Al-Sousi Tower in Gaza City killed all three on 2 August. The same day, in Al-Qarara near Khan Younis, another strike killed Mahmoud Al-Hams, 38, his wife Fatima, 37, and their young daughter, munitions fired from weapons Britain keeps licensing despite its own warnings on Israel arms exports. At least eighteen Palestinians died across Gaza that day alone, two days after Donald Trump’s “Board of Peace” had announced what it called the next, de-escalatory phase of a ceasefire deal.
That is the ceasefire Britain’s new prime minister has inherited, and it is still killing people. Since the truce nominally took hold in October 2025, at least 1,222 Palestinians have been killed and 4,053 injured by continuing Israeli strikes, according to Gaza’s health authorities. Andy Burnham has been in Downing Street three weeks. The question is not whether he inherited this. It is what he has done with it.
Israel arms exports: an apology, and then what Before he was prime minister, Burnham apologised. “Labour’s initial response to the treatment of Gaza caused huge hurt,” he said in July. “We got it wrong and I am sorry for that.” It was a striking thing for a Labour leader to say. It was also, it turns out, close to the limit of what changed.
Weeks later, 80 MPs and peers wrote to him demanding formal recognition of the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry’s finding that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, compliance with the ICJ, and comprehensive sanctions including a full arms embargo. The Foreign Office’s reply offered no recognition and no sanctions, only a pledge to “work tirelessly to achieve a sustainable peace.” Burnham himself has been here before: asked in June, while still mayor of Greater Manchester, whether what he was seeing in Gaza amounted to genocide, he said he couldn’t “judge things of that enormity” from where he stood. He cited “concerns about the disproportionate nature” of the destruction instead. The apology was for tone. The policy stayed where Keir Starmer left it.
Seven prime ministers, one policy
To understand why, it helps to see how Burnham got here at all. He won the Makerfield by-election in June, re-entering Parliament after years as Greater Manchester’s mayor, and took office on 20 July as Britain’s seventh prime minister in a decade, replacing a Starmer government that had spent two years arming Israel and running near-daily RAF intelligence flights over Gaza while resisting the word genocide entirely. Labour was trailing Reform UK for most of that time. Burnham’s arrival, and his apology, were sold as a circuit-breaker: new captain, new course.
But a change of captain is not a change of course if the crew and the cargo stay the same. Burnham’s government has not reversed arms exports to Israel, has not ended RAF intelligence cooperation, and within 48 hours of taking office had confirmed it, not reconsidered it.
Same war, new salesman
That continuity has a paper trail. Burnham addressed the Farnborough International Airshow by video in late July, telling the arms industry “we are going to reindustrialise this nation” and pushing to raise defence spending from 2.6% to 3.5% of GDP. Exhibiting on the floor were Elbit Systems, Israel Aerospace Industries and Rafael Advanced Defense Systems, whose representatives refused to answer questions from independent journalists while protesters outside accused them of complicity in genocide. A prime minister who has apologised for Britain’s role in Gaza chose that fair to make his industrial pitch.
The personnel tell the same story. John Healey, as defence secretary, authorised at least 519 RAF spy flights over Gaza since December 2023, insisting they served “solely” hostage rescue. He has now been promoted to chancellor. And within his second full day in office, Burnham approved continuing US use of RAF Fairford and Diego Garcia for strikes connected to Iran, a policy Starmer’s government first struck in March. He did not have to extend it. He chose to.
The cabinet the lobby built
There is a structural reason the policy hasn’t moved, and it sits inside the cabinet. More than a third of Burnham’s top team has current or past links to Labour Friends of Israel: Wes Streeting, now defence secretary, describes himself as a 20-year LFI supporter; Jonathan Reynolds is a former LFI vice-chair; Rachel Reeves, Pat McFadden and Peter Kyle are all listed vice-chairs. LFI published a report this summer arguing that a blanket boycott of Israeli settlement goods is “practically and politically impossible” and would harm “all Israeli businesses operating in the settlement blocs.” Burnham has floated a settlement-goods ban as one of the “further measures to deter unacceptable violence” he’s considering after Parliament returns from recess. Foreign Office diplomats are reportedly sceptical it happens at all. It is worth being precise about who would have to sign off on it, and where they’ve stood before.
Three weeks is not the excuse
To be fair to Burnham: the apology was more than Starmer ever offered, and no previous Labour leader has floated a settlement-goods ban. Three weeks is a short time to judge follow-through, and the Iran basing decision was struck under Starmer, not invented by his successor. Genocide determination is also genuinely contested at the level of international law; the ICJ case brought by South Africa has produced provisional measures, not a final ruling, and Western governments generally wait for that before using the word. None of that explains Farnborough. None of it explains extending, rather than pausing, the Iran basing arrangement in his first 48 hours. Rhetoric can move faster than three weeks allow. Choices don’t wait for permission.
West Bank, meanwhile
While Westminster debates a ban it may never impose, the West Bank is being taken apart in real time. OCHA recorded 3,033 settler attacks between January 2025 and June 2026, running at 190 a month this year against 153 last year. Nearly 2,000 Palestinians were displaced in the first four months of 2026 alone, already a fifth more than in the whole of 2025, concentrated around Ramallah, Nablus and Hebron. Fatalities linked to settler violence this year already exceed last year’s total.
That is who loses while Burnham’s government weighs its options: Palestinians in Gaza still dying under a ceasefire that keeps failing them, and Palestinians in the West Bank being pushed off their land at a record pace. The winners are easier to name. The Israeli arms firms who got a British prime minister’s endorsement at Farnborough. The LFI-aligned ministers who have so far kept the one policy on the table off the table. And Washington, which lost no basing rights when the man in Downing Street changed. Britain got a new captain. Nobody has shown the ship a new course.
