Keir Starmer Out? Labour leader under pressure to quit over Gaza ceasefire stance
After recently refusing to back a ceasefire amid the Israel-Hamas conflict, the Labour Party leader Keir Starmer is now facing pressure from two councilmen regarding his stance.
Starmer, who said while he “understood” the calls for both sides to lay down weapons, he did “not believe that is the correct position now, for two reasons”, insisted a ceasefire is not the “correct position” to take on the conflict with Israel “at this stage”.
This has led Labour leaders of Burnley and Pendle Labour groups to call on Starmer to step down from his position, as he is still resisting calls to support a ceasefire.
The Pendle Borough council, Asad Mahmood, has called on Sir Keir to “resign to allow someone to lead our party who has compassion and speaks out against injustice” since the leader of the Labour Party has “failed to listen”.
When speaking at Chatham House in London, Starmer said a “ceasefire always freezes any conflict in the state where it currently lies”, suggesting that would only give Hamas time to embolden and “start preparing for future violence immediately”.
However, Burnley council leader Afrasiab Anwar believes a humanitarian pause is “not good enough”.
Furthermore, he stated that the councilmen feel, in the least, the leader of the opposition should be “applying pressure on the Prime Minister, on the Government, to call for a ceasefire and a release of all hostages”.
Anwar believes the reason a humanitarian pause is not good enough is because the bombing and attacks will start again once the aid gets in.
He added: “The whole international community came out and said that Israel has the right to defend itself, just as any other nation does, but it’s got to be proportional and within international law.
“The number of lives that we’re seeing lost, the number of people, innocent civilians, who are losing their lives on both sides, we need to call it out and there needs to be a stop to it.”
The Labour leader, who will probably try later to turn attention back to the Tories and accuse Prime Minister Rishi Sunak of overseeing economic decline, will call for a “big build” to revive the sluggish economy during his visit to Durham at the North East Chamber of Commerce.
Addressing businesses, he is expected to say: “Britain needs this King’s Speech to kick off a big build.
“We have to provide the businesses, communities and people of this nation with the conditions to succeed. A fundamental deal, that we serve the country, while you drive it forward.
“The Tories can’t do this. Rishi Sunak is too weak to stand up to the blockers on his backbenches. Too haunted by ghosts of Conservative imagination to see the country’s problems as you see them.”
Keir Starmer is also expected to vow that a government led by him would “relight the fire of renewal” in communities across the UK and “take on the blockers that hold a veto over British aspiration”.