Full Accountability

Hours after the hapless Pat McFadden had surprised no one by promising that a Labour Government would continue to arm Israel, the three were named. James Henderson, who had served six years in the Royal Marines. John Chapman, formerly of the Special Boat Service. James Kirby, an Army veteran. All three had ties to Solace Global; there are things that could be said about aid workers who were also intelligence operatives, but the phenomenon is not new, not secret, and not necessarily problematic. It says a lot for British intelligence that the IDF would engage in the highly clinical murder of its functionaries.

Israel is our ally in what way? What specific form does that alliance take? What do the Israelis do for us? At all, never mind such that they must be allowed to get away with this, as they are already being? These were precision strikes, like the one on the Iranian consulate in Damascus, which killed specific individuals. Always remember that the IDF is capable of that. The damage that it does is not collateral, whether there, or here, or at al-Shifa, or in the bombing of the UN peacekeeping mission in Lebanon, which is largely Irish, let both the United States and Australia understand, and let McFadden understand.

At least there was not a Labour Government, or there would not even have been that theatrical summoning of the Israeli Ambassador to the Foreign Office. Where she was told what, exactly? But not even that would have happened under Labour, and anyone suggesting it would have been expelled from the Labour Party. David Mencer, whom Krishnan Guru-Murthy put through the mangle when he was sent out to defend this act of war on Channel 4 News, is a former Director of Labour Friends of Israel, and presumably still a member of the British Labour Party. There is no suggestion that he is going to be expelled. Much less that his British citizenship might be revoked, even though he is a lot older than 15, he does in fact hold another nationality, and not even as a propagandist, which is in itself a war crime, did Shamima Begum ever have any part in the killing of three British aid workers. Like Jacob Rees-Mogg and Peter Hitchens, I am opposed to the denaturalisation of Begum. We are consistent. The Government is not.

Suggesting that Israel should investigate itself would be laughable if that suggestion had not been made in what we were expected to treat as absolute seriousness. By arming Israel, it is perfectly possible that we have supplied the arms that have killed Henderson, Chapman and Kirby. Margaret Thatcher suspended arms sales to Israel in 1982, and Tony Blair did so in 2002. That should already have happened by now, and there is no conceivable reason for not doing it after these three separate attacks on marked vehicles, each 100 metres from the next, and each of which deliberately killed a British civilian. But the present Official Opposition would never call for that, and the present Speaker of the House of Commons would therefore obstruct a division on it.

The same would apply to what it is now difficult to view as anything much more than the treasonable service of British citizens in the IDF. Although it is not the law, there is a policy of not prosecuting conscripted dual nationals under the Foreign Enlistment Act. That should no longer apply to the IDF. Every year, including during the present conflagration, huge numbers of Israeli teenagers avoid the draft on mental health grounds that rarely prevent them from doing anything else. As for Britons who became or remained IDF volunteers after this, well, do I really need to finish that sentence?

Say it again that propagandising for a war crime is itself a war crime. Bombing aid convoys is necessary to the engineering of famine as a weapon of war, something that Keir Starmer has said that Israel had the right to do. He supports the two-child benefit cap at home, and he supports the starvation of children in Gaza, too. The blood of Henderson, Chapman and Kirby is among the oceans of it on his hands.

But when I tell you that there is going to be a hung Parliament, then you can take that to the bank. I spent the 2005 Parliament saying that it was psephologically impossible for the Heir to Blair's Conservative Party to win an overall majority. I predicted a hung Parliament on the day that the 2017 General Election was called, and I stuck to that, entirely alone, all the way up to the publication of the exit poll eight long weeks later. And on the day that Rishi Sunak became Prime Minister, I predicted that a General Election between him and Starmer would result in a hung Parliament.

I have no plan to join the Workers Party of Britain, although nor would I expect to stand against it. If, however, it did not contest North Durham, then I would. To strengthen families and communities by securing economic equality and international peace through the democratic political control of the means to those ends, including national and parliamentary sovereignty, we need to hold the balance of power. Owing nothing to either main party, we must be open to the better offer. There does, however, need to be a better offer. Not a lesser evil, which in any case the Labour Party is not. We have made a start.