Starmer’s Selective Outrage: Standing Before a Banner Calling Israel ‘Fascist’

The Curious Case of Keir Starmer’s Vanishing Principles

So much for moral consistency. Sir Keir Starmer, who has built his leadership on the promise to purge Labour of antisemitism and discipline anyone even remotely critical of Israel, once stood quite happily in front of a banner that read “Kick Israeli Fascism out of FIFA.”

Yes, the man who has turned Labour into a safe haven for flag-waving Atlanticism and censorship of Palestinian solidarity once shared a stage with campaigners calling for sanctions against Israel, and no disciplinary emails were pinging around the NEC at 2 am.

Back in 2015, Starmer, then just another parliamentary hopeful for Holborn and St Pancras, attended an event organised by the Camden Palestine Solidarity Campaign. The meeting backed a boycott of Israeli goods and supported efforts to suspend Israel from world football’s governing body over restrictions on Palestinian players.

For any ordinary Labour member, that kind of photo-op would have meant suspension by breakfast. But Starmer? Different rules apply. Apparently, standing before a banner accusing Israel of “fascism” is fine, so long as you’re the one who later gets to define what is and isn’t “acceptable discourse.”

The revelation could not have come at a worse time for the Labour leader. It surfaced on the eve of a crucial party-conference vote on his new disciplinary procedures for antisemitism and other complaints, a vote designed to demonstrate his “zero tolerance.”

Labour officials were quick to scramble. They insisted Sir Keir has “never supported a boycott of Israel” and “never backed the campaign to expel Israel from FIFA.” And as for the now-infamous “foreign flags ban” whispered about at conference? They denied that too.

But the pictures tell their own story. Starmer, front and centre, perfectly comfortable beneath a banner denouncing “Israeli fascism”, the very kind of image that, under his own leadership, would see a rank-and-file member hauled before a disciplinary panel or the public with arrest.

It’s hard not to see the hypocrisy. When it suited his career, Starmer had no problem sharing a stage with campaigners calling out Israel’s treatment of Palestinians. Now, as Labour leader, he silences anyone who dares say the same.

The Palestine question has become Labour’s third rail, the issue that exposes every fault line in the party’s hypocrisy. Starmer’s response has been to suppress rather than to engage, to discipline rather than to discuss, to treat legitimate political advocacy as thoughtcrime. This might work as a short-term strategy for managing internal dissent. As a long-term approach to one of the defining moral questions of our age, it is catastrophically inadequate.

British foreign policy towards Israel and Palestine requires urgent recalibration. The humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza and its unfolding genocide demand a government willing to apply consistent principles to all parties. But how can Starmer’s government do this credibly when its leader cannot even acknowledge his own history on the issue?

The photograph from Camden will not disappear. It will resurface whenever Starmer’s government faces difficult questions about his stance today. A politician who cannot own his past has forfeited the right to shape our future.

Once again, we’re reminded: in Starmer’s Britain, there’s one rule for one and another for the rest of us poor schmucks.

Paul Knaggs

Editor, founder, Labour Heartlands, Citizen journalist. 𝙁𝙧𝙚𝙚𝙗𝙤𝙧𝙣 𝙀𝙣𝙜𝙡𝙞𝙨𝙝 𝙍𝙖𝙙𝙞𝙘𝙖𝙡 𝙎𝙤𝙘𝙞𝙖𝙡𝙞𝙨𝙩. Fighting a constant struggle with dyslexia that’s overcome with a burning desire to speak out against the corrupt political system and the social injustices it creates. Advocate for Free speech and open, accountable, democracy. #GTTO