Starmer writes to Labour councillors stressing his concern for international law to quash concerns he"s too pro-Israel Keir Starmer has written to Labour councillors stressing his sympathy with the plight of the Palestinian people, his demand for Israel to act within international law at all times, and the importance of Gaza getting access to food, water, electricity and medicine. Rachel Wearmouth from the New Statesman has posted it on X. The letter fleshes out what Starmer himself was saying at PMQs (see 12.10pm and 2.04pm) and what David Lammy, the shadow foreign secretary, said in the chamber (see 1.01pm.) It does not contradict what Starmer was saying about the Israel-Hamas conflict last week (because even Starmer’s most pro-Israel interventions including a call for international law to be followed), but the tone is more pro-Palestinian, and more internationalist, than what was being said by the party in the days immediately after the Hamas attack. Starmer is doing this to quell a potential rebellion in the party from activists alarmed at the highly pro-Israel tone of the party’s initial response to the conflict. Leftwing Labour MPs have been relatively restrained (following the suspension of Jeremy Corbyn and Diane Abbott, some of them are nervous about speaking out), but outside the Commons there been resignations at council level and many Muslim Labour members are said to have signed an open letter to Starmer saying “your consistent defence of Israel’s actions, often with limited regard for the humanitarian plight of the Palestinians, has left many members of the Muslim community feeling unheard and unrepresented”. According to the Financial Times, Lammy and Sue Gray, Starmer’s chief of staff, held a meeting with councillors on Monday night to discuss this. In their story Lucy Fisher and William Wallis say Lammy and Gray were “warned by councillors who want Labour to criticise Israel’s actions that the party had ‘a day or two’ left to alter course before the internal situation became ‘unmanageable’, according to one person present”. Early evening summary Rishi Sunak has urged MPs not to rush to judgment over the blast at a hospital in Gaza, as he was repeatedly urged by the Labour leader, Keir Starmer, to remind Israel to respect international law. Keir Starmer has sought to allay the concerns of some Labour members that he has been too pro-Israel in response to the conflict triggered by the Hamas attack. In a letter to councillors, he has stressed his sympathy with the plight of the Palestinian people, his demand for Israel to act within international law at all times, and the importance of Gaza getting access to food, water, electricity and medicine. The letter does not contradict what Starmer was saying about the Israel-Hamas conflict last week, but the tone is more pro-Palestinian, and more internationalist, than what he was saying around the time of Labour conference, particularly in an LBC interview that triggered resignations. (See 2.38pm.) People are already handing in XL bully dogs, with some requesting that their pet be put down, after the announcement of an impending ban, MPs have been told. The British Museum was the “victim of an inside job” when approximately 2,000 artefacts were stolen from its collections, the chair of trustees, George Osborne, has said. Andrew Cooper, the Conservative candidate in tomorrow’s byelection in Tamworth, has has defended sharing a Facebook post telling jobless parents who cannot feed their children to “fuck off” if they still pay a £30 phone bill. Momentum launches campaign to get Labour to call for ceasefire in Israel/Gaza Momentum, the leftwing Labour group originally set up to promote Jeremy Corbyn and his policies, has launched a campaign to get the party to call for a ceasefire in Israel/Gaza. It has set up an online tool that enables people in a Labour constituency to see if their MP is calling for a ceasefire, and to lobby them to do so if they’re not. People without a Labour MP can use the tool to lobby Keir Starmer and David Lammy, the shadow foreign secretary. A Commons early day motion saying the government should call for a ceasefire is now backed by 45 MPs from various parties. (See 4.12pm.) Momentum also wants the Labour party to condemn the tactics being used by Israel. In a news relase, it has quoted approvingly a tweet from the leftwing Labour MP Zarah Sultana. She says: Saying “Israel should follow international law” but refusing to condemn Israel for blatantly violating international law isn’t just hollow. It’s an insult to the Palestinian people indiscriminately killed in Israel’s brutal bombardment of Gaza. Sultana posted this on X today after Starmer and Lammy stressed Labour’s belief in the need for Israel to abide by international law in the Commons. (See 2.38pm.) Tony Grew, who runs the PARLYapp Twitter account, has posted the results of the elections for the three select committee chair vacancies. (See 4.49pm.) Standards committee Committee chair election results: Harman gets standards, Byrne business, and Smith petitions MPs have elected three new select committee chairs today. Harriet Harman is the new standards committee chair. She beat Stella Creasy. Liam Byrne is the business and trade committee chair. He beat Angela Eagle and Andy McDonald. And Cat Smith is the new petitions committee chair. She beat Marsha de Cordova and Liz Twist. All three posts were set aside for Labour MPs, but all members of the Commons were entitled to vote. A reader asks: David Lammy asked James Cleverly to share information publicly or privately on privy council terms. (See 12.51pm.) Exactly what does this mean? David Lammy and James Cleverly are both privy counsellors. This means they are members of the privy council, a body of several hundred who are technically advisers to the king. Almost all of them are or were senior politicians; once you are in, you are in for life, because it is very hard to get kicked out (although occasionally people resign). Cabinet ministers automatically become members, and senior opposition politicians get to join too. Most MPs take the view that being a privy counsellor is a far superior honour to getting a knighthood or a damehood. Ministers who are members of the privy council occasionally have to attend privy council meetings where they agree “orders in council” (minor bits of legislation) in the presence of the king (all standing up, for some reason). For other privy counsellors, there is almost nothing in the job description. But, because they have taken the privy council oath, which includes a passage about keeping secrets, government takes the view that they can be trusted with confidential information. And so sometimes the government will brief opposition MPs on “privy council terms” – meaning, on the strict understanding material is kept confidential. As with many constitutional quirks, this is not strictly necessary. Ministers and officials regularly share confidential information with people who are not members of the privy council (like journalists) because they have a relationship of trust. And thousands of civil servants get access to secret information without being privy counsellors because they have been vetted and have given confidentiality undertakings in writing. 43 MPs sign cross-party motion saying government should call for ceasefire in Israel/Gaza At PMQs Stephen Flynn, the SNP leader at Westminster, said the UK should be calling for a ceasefire in Israel/Gaza. (See 12.20pm.) Rishi Sunak rejected the idea, and James Cleverly, the foreign secretary, explained later that he thought there was no chance of Hamas observing one (see 1.19pm). Keir Starmer has also rejected the idea. At a post-PMQs briefing, asked about the proposal, a Labour spokesperson said: “We have repeatedly said that Israel has the right to defend itself and has the right to retrieve hostages.” But 43 MPs have backed a Commons early day motion saying the government should “urgently press all parties to agree to an immediate de-escalation and cessation of hostilities”. It has been tabled by Richard Burgon, who is one of 29 Labour MPs who have signed it so far. Mostly they are leftwingers, but the signatories include Liam Byrne, who is not part of that faction in the party. The EDM has also been signed by 4 independent MPs, 3 SNP MPs, 2 Alba MPs, 1 Conservative MP, 1 Plaid Cymru MP, 1 Green MP, 1 Alliance MP and 1 SDLP MP. The Tory is Sir Peter Bottomley, father of the house. Burgon said: These are incredibly dark days for humanity, with so many lives already lost. Preventing the death of any more civilians must be our top priority. That means we need an immediate ceasefire. The UN general secretary has called for this. It is crucial that political leaders across the world, including our own, back that call to avoid the loss of any more civilian lives. During PMQs, in response to a question from Labour’s Karin Smyth, Rishi Sunak refused to condemn the Tory candidate in the Tamworth byelection for posting an image on Facebook post telling jobless parents who cannot feed their children to “fuck off” if they still pay a £30 phone bill. (See 12.30pm.) At a post-PMQs briefing, asked if Sunak thought the candidate’s message was acceptable, the PM’s press secretary said his message would be to “judge us by our actions”. She went on: I think the point that was being made is that the safety net of benefits is there to provide a vital support for those that need it, and, unlike Labour, we’re a party that believes in work to provide for yourself and your family and we back those that do that, so I’d say judge us by our actions on supporting the most vulnerable. Asked whether Sunak thinks words do not matter, she said: “He believes actions matter more.” Council leaders and anti-poverty campaigners join attack on Humza Yousaf"s decision to freeze council tax in Scotland Humza Yousaf’s pledge to freeze council tax in Scotland (see 10.46am) has been met with a further backlash, from struggling local councils and anti-poverty campaigners. Yousaf insisted that the rehashed Salmond-era policy – billed as an attempt to win back voters from resurgent Scottish Labour and which U-turned on original plans to increase council tax after they were met with an outcry from struggling middle earners – would be fully funded by Holyrood. But it provoked anger from the local authority umbrella body Cosla, which today described his failure to consult them in advance as “deplorable” and threatened not to implement it. After an emergency council leaders’ meeting this morning, the Cosla president, Shona Morrison, said there was no agreement to freeze council tax. She went on: Previous council tax freezes have been regressive, having no impact for the poorest in society and eroding the council tax base, compounding councils’ ongoing underfunding. Peter Kelly of the Poverty Alliance said: Those who are on the lowest incomes will gain little from this freeze on council tax. Instead the freeze will put further pressure on local services, services that people on low incomes disproportionately rely on. And Lewis Ryder-Jones, Oxfam Scotland’s policy adviser, said the freeze would do nothing to address the inherent unfairness in the council tax system. He said: The upcoming Scottish budget is a litmus test of the first minister’s political courage and vision: will there be more timidity and yet more stalling, or will he seize the chance to kickstart a series of wholesale tax reforms which will help build the fairer, greener, more equal Scotland we all want to live in? Starmer has been "absolutely consistent" on importance of Israel following international law, Labour claims Keir Starmer’s spokesperson said the Labour leader had been “absolutely consistent” in stressing the importance of Israel adhering to international law after a number of councillors resigned in protest at his apparent stance over the conflict with Hamas. The Labour leader had said during an interview with LBC last week that Israel had “the right” to withhold energy and water from Gaza, prompting an angry reaction among some within his party. He added: “Obviously, everything should be done within international law.” His spokesperson suggested that Starmer had, in fact, been answering a previous question on Israel’s right to defend itself, and had stressed his position on international law in multiple other interviews with the media that day. He went on: That has been our position throughout and that hasn’t changed. If you listen to the tape it was one of those things where there was overlapping questions and answers based on what had been said before which was the specific question beforehand about Israel having the right to defend itself, which is something we have repeatedly said and stand by. In terms of the situation we want to see all parties stick to that is to adhere to international law, and that was what was said on LBC as part of that same answer. That has been consistent in all of the interviews he has done. The shadow foreign secretary, David Lammy, and Sue Gray, Starmer’s chief of staff, met Labour councillors on Monday night to discuss the issue, while the Labour leader wrote to all of the party’s councillors himself today. (See 2.38pm.) The spokesperson went on: We think that it’s really important that those who are local representatives where clearly there are strong feelings among people of different faiths and of no faiths on this issue. We are giving councillors the respect of the chance to hear from the Labour frontbench and for us to set out our position, not least how some of these issues can get edited on social media … We know this is an issue where people have strong feelings and that’s something we completely respect. He suggested there would be further engagement from the Labour frontbench with local councillors over the issue in the days ahead. Starmer writes to Labour councillors stressing his concern for international law to quash concerns he"s too pro-Israel Keir Starmer has written to Labour councillors stressing his sympathy with the plight of the Palestinian people, his demand for Israel to act within international law at all times, and the importance of Gaza getting access to food, water, electricity and medicine. Rachel Wearmouth from the New Statesman has posted it on X. The letter fleshes out what Starmer himself was saying at PMQs (see 12.10pm and 2.04pm) and what David Lammy, the shadow foreign secretary, said in the chamber (see 1.01pm.) It does not contradict what Starmer was saying about the Israel-Hamas conflict last week (because even Starmer’s most pro-Israel interventions including a call for international law to be followed), but the tone is more pro-Palestinian, and more internationalist, than what was being said by the party in the days immediately after the Hamas attack. Starmer is doing this to quell a potential rebellion in the party from activists alarmed at the highly pro-Israel tone of the party’s initial response to the conflict. Leftwing Labour MPs have been relatively restrained (following the suspension of Jeremy Corbyn and Diane Abbott, some of them are nervous about speaking out), but outside the Commons there been resignations at council level and many Muslim Labour members are said to have signed an open letter to Starmer saying “your consistent defence of Israel’s actions, often with limited regard for the humanitarian plight of the Palestinians, has left many members of the Muslim community feeling unheard and unrepresented”. According to the Financial Times, Lammy and Sue Gray, Starmer’s chief of staff, held a meeting with councillors on Monday night to discuss this. In their story Lucy Fisher and William Wallis say Lammy and Gray were “warned by councillors who want Labour to criticise Israel’s actions that the party had ‘a day or two’ left to alter course before the internal situation became ‘unmanageable’, according to one person present”. Starmer accused of backing away from unequivocal support expressed last week for Israel"s siege tactics in Gaza Andrew Fisher, who was Jeremy Corbyn’s policy chief, says Keir Starmer committed a U-turn at PMQs when he said that “medicines, food, fuel and water must get into Gaza immediately”. (See 12.10pm.) Fisher says this is a shift from last week, when Starmer gave an interview to LBC in which he appeared to condone Israel cutting off power and water to Gaza. (“Appeared” because Starmer also said Israel should act within international law, which does not allow the siege tactics Starmer was defending.) Starmer and other shadow cabinet ministers took a similar line in other interviews, but the LBC interview was particularly provocative, and has been cited by some Labour members who have resigned in protest. “Medicines, fuel, food and water must get into Gaza” says Keir Starmer, who talked of the “harrowing humanitarian” situation on the ground. U-turn from a week ago on LBC when he said Israel had the right to cut off water and electricity Diana Johnson (Lab) says she is baffled why the BBC refuses to describe Hamas as a terrorist group when they are a proscribed organisation. Cleverly says he cannot understand why the BBC won’t call Hamas terrorists. Caroline Lucas (Green) says of course securing a ceasefire would be hard. But, without one, thousands more people will be killed, she says. She says the UK should be on the right side of history. Cleverly says Hamas and groups such as Islamic Jihad are also involved in this conflict. He says anyone calling for Israel to observe a ceasefire should also be calling on the terrorist groups to accept that. (That provokes gasps from some MPs in the chamber, because he seems to be implying that Lucas isn’t doing that.) Cleverly says broadcasters should focus on accuracy, and not try to "outpace social media platforms" Damian Green (Con) asked Cleverly if he agreed that broadcasters and social media companies needed to be more responsible in their reporting. “I am struck by the number of emails I have had from constituents that have already rushed to conclusions and all blame Israel,” he said. Cleverly said there was ongoing efforts in government to urge social media platforms to “act with greater professionalism and greater consciousness of the impact they have”. He went on: I would make a broad point to broadcasters. I have had this conversation directly with broadcasters in the past. I believe there is an attempt by broadcasters to try and outpace those social media platforms. The days of breaking news on those traditional platforms is long in the past. They should focus on accuracy rather than pace, because their words have impact here in the UK, and around the world. No 10 says at least seven Britons known to have been killed in Hamas attack, and nine more missing At the post-PMQs briefing, No 10 said that at least seven Britons are now known to have been killed in the Hamas attack on Israel, and a further nine are missing. On Monday Sunak told MPs at least six Britons had been killed, and 10 more were missing. Anum Qaisar (SNP) asked Cleverly if he would back calls for an international criminal court investigation into what was happening in Gaza, including the forced removal of civilians. Cleverly said he thought Qaisar was “fundamentally wrong”. He said encouraging people to move to safety was not forced relocation. Crispin Blunt (Con), a former chair of the foreign affairs committee, says both sides have already committed war crimes. In Gaza people are starving, and being “dehydrated to death”. That amounts to collective punishment, which is illegal. And the forced deportation of people is also illegal, he says. He says a ceasefire is the only way out of this. UPDATE: Blunt said: Whatever the investigation finds out, it’s not going to matter a great deal to all those who are dead in the hospital. Whether the Israeli explanation is correct – that it was an Islamic jihad missile that misfired and then landed amongst explosives that were on the hospital site, which then killed so many people – or whether it was an Israeli strike, in the end both sides have now committed war crimes. Cleverly rejects call for UK to demand ceasefire, saying Hamas would not respect one Rachael Maskell (Lab) urges the government to call for a ceasefire, to de-esclate the situation. Cleverly replies: I have seen nothing – nothing – which leads me to believe that Hamas would respect calls for a ceasefire. Andrew Percy (Con) criticises the BBC for reporting what Hamas said about the hospital blast as fact, without challenge, last night. He says reporting like this puts Jews at risk. Cleverly says journalists should remember that taking time to establish the facts can save lives. UPDATE: Percy said: Last night there were members in this place, including senior members, scurrying around stating as fact that this incident was caused by an Israeli rocket. The BBC and other media referred to Hamas statements by Hamas officials – I think they meant to say Hamas terrorists – and they presented them as fact without challenge. This is not only risking radicalisation of communities in this country, where we already know there’s a problem with antisemitism, it is also putting Jews at risk and I’d just urge colleagues to be careful of their comments given the role blood libels play in promoting antisemitism. One MP that Percy may have been referring to is Jeremy Corbyn, who posted this on X last night. Israeli air strikes have hit Al Ahli hospital in Gaza. More than 500 people - patients, doctors & those sheltering - have been killed. What unspeakable horror. We will mourn their loss forever. Our leaders could have spoken up for peace. They chose to cheer on war instead. When will they demand an end to these atrocious war crimes? How many Palestinian lives will it take to call for these indiscriminate killings to stop? Please, for the sake of humanity, raise your voice for an immediate ceasefire. The existence of the Palestinian people is at stake.