A faultline has opened in Keir Starmer’s pragmatic politics – and this time none of the usual fixes will work
Keir Starmer during prime minister’s questions in the House of Commons last week.Photograph: Jessica Taylor/UK PARLIAMENT/AFP/Getty Images” fifu-data-src=”https://i3.wp.com/www.skepticsociety.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/d390bf3b1b7fd32c3a8be7ab86ee30be.jpeg?ssl=1″ data-src=”https://i3.wp.com/www.skepticsociety.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/d390bf3b1b7fd32c3a8be7ab86ee30be.jpeg?ssl=1″/> Keir Starmer during prime minister’s questions in the House of Commons last week.Photograph: Jessica Taylor/UK PARLIAMENT/AFP/Getty Images Amid the fallout from last week’s chaos in the Commons, one question has gone largely unexplored: is Labour out of the woods on Gaza? Despite all efforts to manoeuvre itself into a safer position, the party seems to have only inflamed things further. Its ostensibly successful face-saving amendment to the SNP’s ceasefire motion – and its apparent pressure on the speaker, Lindsay Hoyle, to upturn parliamentary convention – brought about a crisis in the Commons, and has done little to appease angry voters. The resulting waves of claim and toxic counterclaim are still building: Lee Anderson’s outburst of anti-Muslim rhetoric has led to him being stripped of the Tory whip. No matter how much analysis says otherwise, particularly the sort that treats Westminster as a self-contained theatre of political gamesmanship, Labour’s victory was a pyrrhic one. It was secured …