Keir Starmer throws a Palestinian family under a bus for gruesome ends

This is a damning indictment of the total moral bankruptcy of those who rule us

This is a truly nauseating indictment of Britain’s political elite. Two politicians with no moral core, no decency, no integrity, who use the most vulnerable people on earth as crude electoral fodder.

Keir Starmer, the Prime Minister whose approval rating is currently around minus 42 - slightly less popular than the bubonic plague - and Kemi Badenoch, Tory leader and one of the worst excuses for a frontline politician so far spewed out by Westminster.

Finally, the plight of the Palestinian people was raised at Prime Ministers’ Question, the weekly gladiatorial contest where MPs scream a lot and make sounds like dying animals. And what both politicians did was to flaunt their racist contempt for Palestinians, specifically throwing Palestinians who are suffering specifically because of horrors they’re complicit in under a bus.

The Tory leader denounces a Palestinian family from Gaza apparently having their claim for asylum accepted under the scheme for Ukrainian refugee, and Starmer denounces the judgement and makes clear his Home Secretary is looking to close the “loophole” that made it possible.

This has triggered widespread revulsion, and it exposes how politically and morally bankrupt our rulers really are. Look, I supported the Ukraine Family Scheme. My brother took in a Ukrainian family under that scheme, so did some of my friends. The point that was made by some is that when Russia illegally and brutally invaded Ukraine, the solidarity and sympathy extended to Ukrainian refugees was not, let’s put it gently, exactly normally extended to non-Europeans with different skin pigmentation.

As an example, just after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the then Ukraine’s Deputy Chief Prosecutor said: It’s very emotional for me because I see European people with blue eyes and blond hair being killed every day” - and the BBC host responded: “I understand and respect the emotion”.

Well, that sums up the mentality grimly well. The difference here of course is that Britain did not supply the weapons to slaughter Ukrainians - quite the opposite, Britain has offered Ukraine £7.8bn worth of military aid.

On the other hand, Britain supplies weapons to Israel to enable it to slaughter Palestinians, and to destroy their homes, and to make Gaza, in the words of Donald Trump “not habitable”. The Labour government might go - well we suspended some weapons to Israel! They tend to keep this very quiet, because they did this under legal compulsion and were very apologetic at the time, emphasising how Israel is a close ally, but in any case, they only suspended 8% of arms sales. Crucially, Britain still upplies the crucial components for F35 jets which rain death and destruction on Gaza.

Furthermore, Kemi Badenoch, as a Conservative government cabinet minister, and Keir Starmer, then as leader of the opposition, backed Israel’s onslaught against Gaza which turned almost every single person in Gaza into a displaced person, and leaving the vast majority of their homes either damaged or destroyed and in any case uninhabitable. That also involved Israel’s deliberate siege of Gaza, which deprived its people of the means of life. Indeed Keir Starmer at the very beginning defended Israel’s “right” to cut off power and water on LBC.

What he supported there was illegal, and he never apologised for it, instead trying to gaslight everyone by stating he had never believed what he in fact actually said.

At the same, Israel’s political and military leaders repeatedly made clear their belief in the collective guilt of the civilian population, who were called human animals, who the Israeli president declared were all involved - he said “it’s an entire nation out there responsible”- underlining how the entire population of Gaza was at risk, and that this is in fact a genocide facilitated by the British state.

So these are two politicians who have played what I believe to be a criminal role in the destruction of Gaza, and thus the creation of so many refugees. But having helped annihilate Gaza, they now declare their refusal to allow those whose lives they helped destroy come here for safety.

And it’s worth actually looking at the facts of the case, which Sky News, to their credit here, went through.

There is a family of six - a husband and wife, and their children, aged 18, 17, 8 and 7, who lived in Gaza, their homes destroyed by Israel’s onslaught. Although Sky News’ language must be critiqued here:

“Their homes were destroyed after the 7 October attacks and subsequent conflict.”

The fate of this family is framed around 7th October and then “subsequent conflict” - a absurd euphemism for Israel’s military onslaught.

Sky News say the family ended up living in a humanitarian zone and then a refugee camp.

They go on:

“In January 2024, the family applied to come to the UK via the Ukraine Family Scheme form, in a bid to join one of the parent's brothers, who is a British citizen and has lived in the UK since 2007.

While they acknowledged they were not eligible for the Ukraine scheme, the family chose to apply in an attempt to use the Home Office's policy on "applications for entry clearance outside the rules".

The Home Office rejected the request, saying they were not satisfied there were "compelling, compassionate circumstances" to justify a request outside the rules.

They also noted the lack of a resettlement scheme for Palestinians.”

Sky News note that the family launched an appeal on human rights grounds, despite the Home Office claiming they had no grounds to do so. A judge then ruled the initial rejection constituted a rejection of human rights, so allowed an appeal, partly under article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights - “the right to a family life between the man living in Britain and his family in Gaza.”

That appeal was then rejected, the lack of a Palestinian resettlement scheme noted as a reason.

Subsequently, an appeal was launched at a higher tribunal - with one argument that the case should be considered on its own merits merits, without allowing “the lack of a Palestinian resettlement scheme to outweigh other arguments”

The judge then heard the case and allowed the appeal, and said it was "wrong to have taken the absence of a resettlement scheme into account at all". He concluded that just because a scheme to resettle people didn’t exist, it didn’t mean they’re banned from coming to the UK through humanitarian routes, and said the absence of a “resettlement scheme was irrelevant” to their decision.

The judge endorsed the family’s claim based on the European Convention on Human Rights and “the right to a family life between them and their relative in Britain”.

Now, Starmer says he would close what he called the loophole, but as Sky News say “it is not clear what this will entail.”

To be clear, almost all legal routes for refugees to come to Britain have been shut down. Palestinians overwhelmingly want to remain in their actual homeland. But given the British state is complicit in the annihilation of Gaza, it has an colossal moral responsibility to offer a home to some of those who wish to claim sanctuary.

Instead, these utterly disgusting, wretched politicians use the suffering of this Palestinian family in order to play to the basest prejudices of the electorate.

We should call it what it is. It is racism. Why will they make such a positive case for Ukrainians to be able to come here, but not Palestinians? What makes Palestinians different? It is shameless, naked racism. That’s what it is.

This comes at a time when the Labour government has decided to respond to the rise of Nigel Farage’s reform by kicking migrants and refugees. They’re spending £392 million on deporting undocumented migrants - that’s enough to train more than 10,000 nurses. They’re offering migrant bashing porn - that is publishing footage of migrants being deported, as though they’re trash being thrown out - and issuing guidance all but forbidding refugees who’ve taken a “dangerous route” - that is almost any refugee - from ever getting British citizenship - which violates the UN refugee convention.

As I wrote in my Guardian column, this strategy to defuse the radical right has been used across Europe and all it has done is shift conversation on to territory favourable to anti-migrant right-wing parties, and boost them. Indeed this is just a substitute for the government having any answers to the actual problems voters face.

But I just want to end by emphasising the utter duplicity, the unapologetic deceit of Keir starmer. During the Labour leadership campaign, he defended free movement - but also made a passionate defence of migrants when seeking the support of Labour members to become leader.

Now Starmer reneged on absolutely everything he stood for in that election - from taxing the rich to public ownership to scrapping tuition fees to putting human rights at the heart of foreign policy.

He is a charlatan, a man with no principles, no moral core, who stands for nothing other than advancing his own career. And he will throw anyone under bus in the pursuit of power, including a family of Palestinian refugees whose lives he helped destroy. Shame on that man, shame on his government, and I have no doubt that his eventual downfall from power will be prove a particularly bitter experience for him.