On the heels of a busy few weeks in American politics, Keir Starmer refocused the spotlight on British news with an eventful week of his own. Some decisions, like inexplicably suspending seven Labour MPs who voted to scrap the two child benefit cap, were terrible. In the haze of an assassination attempt, a volatile convention, and a presidential drop-out, it is easy to forget that a politics of radical tepidness can rest on great cruelty towards the most vulnerable and authoritarianism in the face of dissent.
More positive, however, has been the British state’s refamiliarisation with the concept of Palestinian human rights (just as the Jewish Chronicle feared).
On 19 July, Foreign Secretary David Lammy announced that the UK will restart funding to the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), the primary agency responsible for humanitarian aid and social services in Gaza. Lammy’s decision undoes the Conservative government’s January funding freeze which followed Israel’s unsubstantiated allegations of UNRWA staff participating in the 7 October attacks. The UK joins UNRWA’s other state supporters in resuming aid, leaving the United States as the only country to maintain its pause on funding. ….more
