Source: Asia Pacific Report
Democracy Now! AMY GOODMAN: In Britain, Keir Starmer has announced his resignation as prime minister and leader of the Labour Party following growing pressure from within the Labour Party to step down. Starmer spoke earlier on Monday: PRIME MINISTER KEIR STARMER: The chance to change the lives of millions of people for the better, that’s what I came into politics for.
Six years ago, I inherited a Labour Party that was politically, financially and morally bankrupt. I was told time and time again that my party was finished, that we were consigned to history, that a majority at the general election, let alone a landslide majority, was impossible.
But we proved those people wrong, because we changed our party, ripping out the poison of antisemitism, restoring trust on the economy, defenCe and national security, and becoming a party that once again stood proudly with, not against, our national flag.
AMY GOODMAN: Starmer’s election as prime minister in 2024 ended more than a decade of Conservative rule in the UK. But during his time in office, he has faced mounting opposition over his embrace of austerity measures and a cost-of-living crisis in Britain, as well as his crackdown on Palestinian solidarity protesters.
Starmer’s announcement paves the way for Britain to have its seventh leader in 10 years. Former Manchester mayor, newly elected Labour MP Andy Burnham, is widely expected to become the next prime minister. However, some leaders of the British left have warned Burnham may do little to shift from Starmer’s policies.
British MP Jeremy Corbyn, who led the Labour Party from 2015 to 2020, said Burnham’s, quote, “basic economic strategy and views seem to me to be accepting too much of the austerity we’ve had imposed on us,” and added in an interview with Sky News that Burnham, “doesn’t appear to be doing anything different internationally,” referring to Britain’s supply of weapons to Israel for its war on Gaza and beyond.
We’re joined now in Paris, France, by Geoffrey Robertson, renowned human rights lawyer, founding head of Doughty Street Chambers, Europe’s largest human rights law practice. He has been widely described as a mentor to Starmer, who worked at the law firm for nearly two decades.
Geoffrey Robertson is also a former UN judge who ran the UN war crimes court in Sierra Leone. His most recent book is titled World of War Crimes: Eyeless in Gaza … and Beyond.
Geoffrey Robertson, before we ask you about Britain’s crackdown on Palestine solidarity activists, the so-called “Elbit 4”, we want to get your response to the announcement by the prime minister that he is stepping down.
GEOFFREY ROBERTSON: Well, there is a connection, you know.
I advised him over the weekend that if he had the numbers — or, if he didn’t have the numbers, he should do a deal with Burnham, who is the obvious favorite to succeed him, because he’s a bit more charismatic than Keir, who’s a bit dull for the public taste.
But if he didn’t have the numbers, he shouldn’t resign, but rather do a deal with Burnham that he became his foreign minister, because Keir Starmer, in my view, has been absolutely brilliant as prime minister dealing with foreign affairs, most importantly, of course, dealing with Donald Trump.
And he has not conceded to Trump. He has not joined in the illegality of the invasion of Iran, as Trump was insisting. He’s kept the distance and kept Britain out of the war crimes that Trump has tried to pull it into.
So, for that reason, I hope he stays on in that capacity, but we don’t know. If he had the numbers, I advised him to make a speech accepting that he made several mistakes, which he has.
He has, for example, in relation to the left. And the leftwing of the Labour Party is, if you like, the beating heart of the party. They don’t know or don’t accept the need ever for economic austerity, but they have got the heart and soul of what is traditionally the Labour Party.
And they were upset by his support for Israel. In particular, they were upset by his prohibition on any protest from Palestine Action, a group that protests about Israeli attacks on Palestine. And he had them banned and had — over 3000 people are now awaiting trial for holding up banners saying that they support Palestine Action.
So, that kind of thing lost him popularity in the Labour Party. It was his attack on the left, his fraying out of the Labour Party Jeremy Corbyn, who led it for several years, and Keir was one of the ministers.
That just wasn’t seen as just.
So, if he moved a little more to the left, and — he may well have kept the party onside, but I think he really lost support in the party because he was perceived as too rightwing for it and because he was too boring.
He lacked charisma.
Everyone went around saying this, from a party whose most uncharismatic leader was Clement Attlee, just after war, had no charisma whatsoever, but did the great thing that Britain now boasts of, like the National Health Service, and so forth.
So, it’s sad that charisma is now a quality for leading the Labour Party, but there it is. AMY GOODMAN: You’ve been fierce in criticising governments like the US and Britain, as well, for its approach to Israel and Palestine, and you specifically talk about what’s happened to Palestine Action.
Last week, four Palestine Action activists in Britain were sentenced as “terrorists” over their involvement in a 2024 protest and raid on a factory operated by one of Israel’s largest arms manufacturers, Elbit Systems. In May, the four activists, known as the Elbit 4, were found guilty of criminal damage for destroying property at the Elbit facility.
But unbeknown to lawyers or the jury, the judge in the case added a terrorism component to the case months earlier. It’s the first time a judge has issued terrorism sentencing enhancements on people who were not actually charged with or convicted of terrorism.
Their prison sentences range from four to over seven years. They must also legally register to a law enforcement terrorist surveillance system for 15 years following their release from prison.
Palestine Action co-founder Huda Ammori told Novara Media in response: “This is the first case, and therefore the test case, for trying to convict activists as terrorists, using a manipulated court process.” So, Geoffrey Robertson, you just wrote a piece for the new magazine The Key, headlined “Punishing Protest as Terrorism.” Can you explain the significance of what happened in this case, and put it in the context of your new book, World of War Crimes: Eyeless in Gaza … and Beyond?
GEOFFREY ROBERTSON: Well, it goes like this. For several centuries, Britain’s democracy has been affected, influenced, improved by protest, protests for the vote. The vote for women came about because of quite violent protests, and the vote generally.
I mean, we could go back and look at the way protest movements of one sort or another, particularly in America, were actually led by people who were devoted democrats.
And now we have a situation where, thanks to a law passed by the Conservative government, not by Labour, recently, a few years ago, that sentencing cases where you have quite ordinary crimes that protesters often commit, like criminal damage, usually dealt with by a fine or an 18-month sentence, if the damage was bad, is now — can be coupled by the judge — not the jury, but the judge can, if he decides in his own mind that they’re terrorists, he can make them go to prison for a lot longer, be labelled as terrorists, be discriminated against in prison.
All sorts of bad things can happen to these young, usually, and sincere, but maybe headstrong, protesters, because although they’re — all they want to do is to change the attitude of the British government, which was very slow in complaining about the massive killings in Gaza.
That’s all they want to do, and yet that is a ground this judge the other day, dealing with four protesters who smashed up a little bit of Elbit, the drone manufacturers — this judge secretly decided that they were terrorists, and so could do all those harsh things to them.
And that, I think, is one matter which needs to be sorted, because we have Mr.
Vance coming over and telling us how we get things wrong, and this would be a good example of because it’s quite contrary to our idea of justice that anyone should be sent to prison for long periods and have all this discrimination against them, when they haven’t been convicted by a jury.
AMY GOODMAN: I just wanted to end by naming the Elbit 4, as they are known, and who they are: Leona Kamio, 30 years old, a nursery school teacher; Samuel Corner, 23, and Fatema Rajwani, 21, students; and Charlotte Head, 30, a domestic abuse case worker.
The original content of this programme is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States Licence.
Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/06/24/palestine-action-terror-sentencing-starmer-resignation-but-labour-change-unlikely-over-israel-policy/