Bernard Spiegal

The resignation of Wes Streeting as Health Secretary in the Starmer government prompts questions about what it means to take responsibility. What does it require of a person, what is entailed, always accepting each situation is context specific. 

By his own account, Wes Streeting, the now former Health Secretary, while still in Government was much exercised about Israel’s actions in Gaza, and Prime Minister Starmer’s response to it. The Guardian reported that Streeting had circulated videos and a note to cabinet on Gaza. A dossier understood to be from three doctors, including two surgeons at prominent London hospitals, all of whom described their experiences of working in Gaza under Israeli bombardment.

In a statement to the Guardian, Streeting said he was “horrified by the war in Gaza” and added: “In government, I did everything I could behind the scenes to get the government to act with the moral urgency the conflict demands. That included sharing the eyewitness testimony of doctors on the ground in Gaza…“I wasn’t by any means the only cabinet minister pushing for action, but we often felt like we were hitting up against a brick wall. Our concerns and motives were dismissed…”

So clearly, Streeting along with some colleague MPs were fully seized of the enormity of Israel’s crimes in Gaza and I think we can take in good faith that he was horrified by what he saw, about what he knew.

Why didn’t he, and his colleague MPs, resign from the government? It’s likely that the mere threat of resignation by Streeting and some colleague MPs would have had an effect. But there is no hint that such a course of possible action was thought of, still less considered.

Our government has normalised the genocide of Palestinians.

The component parts of this genocide include, but are not limited to, mass displacements; the wholesale murder of civilians, in particular of children; starvation; rape and sexual assaults on men and women.  This is all well known, well-documented: from polling surveys to the testimony of individual Palestinians; reports from frontline aid workers; direct witness testimony by foreign doctors volunteering in Gaza; and also by Israeli perpetrators themselves – a few in guilt, shame and sadness; but for many in gloating celebration of their sadistic deeds. 

Yet the British Government barely stirs, confining itself to performative gestures – including recognition of a Palestinian state – as cover for our direct responsibility in enabling Israel’s murderous rampages in the OPT, Lebanon and Syria.

 I said “as cover for our” – yours and mine – “direct responsibility”.In a matter so profound and so egregious as genocide and wholesale slaughter, a government should seek to speak for the nation, should mark out what “we” consider right and wrong. But what this Labour Government has done and is doing, is bringing shame upon the nation.

It is perhaps no surprise that Starmer’s government feels no real pressure to change its stance when one considers the bizarre phenomenon of Labour Friends of Israel (LFI) MPs who, apparently without embarrassment, shame or guilt undergird the government’s position on Palestine/Israel. There are  (approximately) 73 to 75 Labour MPs who are parliamentary supporters or officers of the LFI meaning that 18% of the parliamentary Labour Party are LFI members.

Bringing high principle down to earth

I want to take this to a simple human level: if you had a friend of, say, 20/30 years and then you find out s/he is a serial axe-murderer, would you continue being that person’s friend?  Or would you seek to distance yourself from that person, and perhaps even feel guilty for not noticing/ignoring signs that indeed the friend was an axe-murderer.

There must be some point at which politics intersects with ideas of moral conduct. In other words, in the face of genocide – and if you’re queasy about using that term, try “mass displacement”, “mass murder” instead, it doesn’t make it look any better – one cannot continue as usual. The responsibility is to put as much distance between yourself and the now-recognised offender; and to take urgent steps to stop the offending behaviour.

Taking responsibility

Collective responsibility is a foundational principle of UK Cabinet governance.  Put simply, this means that individual members of a Cabinet are bound by its decisions and actions, notwithstanding an individual member disagreeing, within the confines of Cabinet discussion, with a particular decision. 

Put bluntly, it’s the ‘put up or shut up’ principle at work: say what you will within Cabinet, but once a formal collective decision is reached, public expression of dissent is out of bounds. ‘Suck it up’ is a descriptive variant on the same theme. If you don’t like it, resign.  There’s a corollary to this, which I think logically follows: Silence denotes consent. 

Silence denotes consent

Upon which basis the entirety of British Cabinet have, in effect, consented, made themselves a party to, the Gazan genocide; and, as increasingly seems clear, the genocide unfolding across the Occupied Territory as a whole.

Nor should we ignore the war Israel has unleashed in Lebanon where the same dark litany of mass displacement, and murder of civilians is underway.

‘Silence denotes consent’. Here silence speaks volumes, signalling, to my mind, Cabinet members’ direct – that’s ‘direct’ – responsibility for the horrors Israel perpetrates against Palestinians, now extended to Syrians, the Lebanese and Iranians.

This all points to the moral vacuity, the moral cowardice of individual cabinet members, not to forget the stalwarts of the LFI, who, for personal or party advantage, or because of their purblind commitment to Israel no matter what, neuter moves to punish Israel for its atrocities. In so doing, individual Cabinet and LFI members move from being observers, to active participants, key facilitators of the barbarities Israel perform hourly.

An offence against the heavens

The errors are compounded – though ‘error’ hardly seems adequate: more a sin, an offence against the heavens – by the fact that the mechanisms are to hand that would, at the very least, slow Israel’s malign ambition to create a Greater Israel upon Jewish supremacist foundations and the practices that flow from this.

For the UK is a key supporter of Israel both in terms of ‘soft power’ – formal recognition and diplomatic cover of the rogue state – in tandem with supplying the hard materiality of arms, or arms components. By way of one example:

The UK currently enforces a partial suspension on arms sales to Israel, covering roughly 30 out of approximately 350 direct military export licences. However, components for F-35 fighter jets are explicitly exempt from this ban

Then there’s the UK-Israel trade and partnership agreement worth some £6 billion in goods and services in the four quarters up to end of Q4 in 2025. It could be cancelled or curtailed.

And so it goes on: P.M Starmer and his Government are aiding and abetting Israel’s war crimes. That’s a direct, active relationship – not a side effect, expected or otherwise. It shames us all.