How Israel ties impact UK-Israel relations in Trump’s second term

Rather like Jacob Marley’s ghost in Charles Dickens’s novella A Christmas Carol, Britain’s Labour government is dragging behind it a long, heavy chain to which is attached a great collection of anti-Israel initiatives. It is a cumbersome burden to explain away as Donald Trump, a staunch friend of Israel, enters into his second term as US president.

His first term more or less coincided with the descent of the Labour Party into unprecedented anti-Israel, and indeed anti-Jewish, bias under the leadership of extreme left-winger Jeremy Corbyn. Since Sir Keir Starmer, now the UK’s prime minister, was a leading light in Corbyn’s shadow Cabinet throughout the period, Trump must have had strong reservations about him from the start.

Labour’s antisemitism legacy

It was in September 2015 that the Labour Party voted Corbyn as its leader. His pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel stance (he once notoriously called Hamas and Hezbollah his “friends”) led to charges of antisemitism and to resignations from the party. Finally in May 2019, the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), a body legally charged with enforcing the UK’s equality and non-discrimination laws, launched an unprecedented investigation into whether Labour had “unlawfully discriminated against, harassed, or victimized people because they are Jewish.”

Starmer took over the leadership of the Labour Party in April 2020 and pledged to clean it up from the stigma of antisemitism. However, the EHRC in its report published in October 2020, determined that the Labour Party had indeed been “responsible for unlawful acts of harassment and discrimination” and required it to draft a clean-up action plan.

Immediately after the EHRC issued its report, Corbyn issued his response, asserting that antisemitism within Labour had been “dramatically overstated for political reasons.” A storm of media comment resulted in Starmer suspending him from the party. Corbyn became a free-floating MP (member of Parliament), and it was still as an independent that he fought and won his seat in the general election of July 2024.

Keir Starmer, British Prime Minister, meets Chief of the Defence Staff (CDS) Admiral Sir Antony Radakin, in London, Britain, November 26, 2024. (credit: IAN VOGLER/POOL VIA REUTERS)

Meanwhile, Starmer rehabilitated himself with the UK Jewish community, and MPs who had resigned returned to the fold. In his four years as leader of the opposition, Starmer succeeded so well, and the country became so disillusioned with the Conservative government, that he won an overwhelming victory in the general election of July 2024.

It was at that point that a new tranche of anti-Israel problems not likely to sit well with Trump began to emerge.

A controversial appointment

One of Starmer’s first appointments to the new Labour government was of his longstanding friend and former legal colleague, Richard Hermer. Because Hermer was not an MP, Starmer raised him to the peerage. He thus became a member of the House of Lords, and it was as Lord Hermer that he took up the post of attorney general.

Hermer had made his reputation as a lawyer by defending human rights, sometimes in controversial causes. Early in February 2025, a leading UK newspaper revealed that in 2011 Hermer had helped write a handbook whose purpose was to “prove useful in the fight against Israeli war crimes, occupation, and apartheid.” The text, titled Corporate Complicity in Israel’s Occupation, drew together contributions from pro-Palestinian lawyers and academics, including Hermer.

Hermer’s chapter set out ways in which “Palestinian victims” could use UK courts to sue companies that sold arms to Israel. He writes critically of British “export licenses for weapons used by Israel in violation of international humanitarian and human rights law.”

There is therefore little cause for surprise that in September 2024, on Hermer’s advice, the UK government suspended 30 out of approximately 350 arms export licenses to Israel. This decision was nominally justified by concerns that UK-supplied arms could be used in serious violations of international humanitarian law. This explanation, plainly, took it for granted that Israel – one of the UK’s closest allies – was believed likely to commit such crimes.

The US, of course, not only maintained but enhanced its sale of arms to Israel, and on February 4 it was announced that the Trump administration had sought congressional approval to transfer nearly $1 billion in bombs and military equipment to Israel.

Diverging diplomatic approaches

Hermer was also vocal in urging the government to comply with the International Criminal Court arrest warrants for Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, and Yoav Gallant, its then-defense minister. It was duly made clear that if either Israeli leader were to set foot in the UK, he would run the risk of being arrested.

Trump, on the other hand, immediately condemned the ICC for issuing the warrants, and Washington is reported to be preparing sanctions to be issued against the ICC and its chief prosecutor.

In response to widespread criticism of Hermer for these and other controversial aspects of his career and conduct in office, a groundswell of feeling against him is rising in the media, and there has been a call for his resignation. So far, Starmer has expressed his full support for his attorney general. A government spokesman said: “The UK continues to support Israel’s right to self-defense in accordance with international law. The attorney general is the government’s chief legal adviser and provides impartial legal advice.”

However, Starmer has adopted other positions in regard to Israel and the Middle East not calculated to endear himself to Trump. For example, the Labour government has expressed strong support for UNRWA (the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees), despite the fact that Israel has barred it from operating from within Israeli sovereign territory. Following Hamas’s bloodthirsty incursion into Israel on October 7, 2023, when its followers massacred some 1,200 people and took some 250 hostage, evidence emerged of the actual involvement of Hamas officials in the pogrom. Following the revelation, the UK’s then-Conservative government suspended its funding. On taking office, Starmer’s government immediately resumed UK payments to UNRWA.

The US also stopped funding UNRWA at the time, and on February 4 it emerged that Trump is to maintain the suspension and, moreover, to stop US engagement with the UN Human Rights Council. There seems little meeting of minds between the UK and the US on that issue.

Potential diplomatic tensions

Meanwhile, Starmer is anxious to strengthen the UK’s economic and trade relations with the US during Trump’s second term. He would like to side-step any punitive US tariffs, like those imposed on China, still hanging over the heads of Canada and Mexico, and threatened against the EU. Starmer’s aim is to secure a major deal with the US that supports economic growth, focusing on areas such as defense, security, trade, crime, and migration.

From time to time, Trump makes remarks indicating that he cherishes a soft spot for the UK; but he is, above all, a deal-maker and is likely to make certain demands in exchange for any favorable trade arrangement with the UK. He may, for example, demand that the UK align more closely with US foreign policy, particularly concerning relations with Israel. He could pressure the UK to lift the suspension of arms export licenses to Israel, emphasizing the importance of supporting a key ally in the Middle East. He might expect the UK to withdraw support for ICC investigations targeting Israeli officials, or he could urge the UK to align with his critical stance on UNRWA.

Starmer, saddled with his less than solid record in support of Israel, may find the coming months something of a nightmare.■

The writer is the Middle East correspondent for Eurasia Review. His latest book is Trump and the Holy Land: 2016-2020. Follow him at www.a-mid-east-journal.blogspot.com.