LONDON — A wave of Labour frontbenchers backed calls for a cease-fire in Israel and Gaza Wednesday night, in direct defiance of an order from the party’s leader Keir Starmer.
Labour MPs were ordered to abstain on a parliamentary motion Wednesday night calling for a cease-fire. But 56 MPs — including 10 of Starmer’s top team who have now left their positions as a result of their defiance — said they could not follow the order. Most cited concerns about the deteriorating humanitarian situation in Gaza to explain their rebellion.
The vote in the House of Commons was comfortably defeated, by 125 votes to 293, reflecting that Westminster is yet to fully row behind cease-fire calls made by the United Nations and some European nations among others.
However, the vote is a major blow to Starmer’s authority as he seeks to unite his party behind a common position on the conflict in the Middle East.
Labour figures as senior as Jess Phillips, a former leadership contender and shadow domestic violence minister, opted not to obey a strict “three line whip” ordered by the Labour leader.
The motion was tabled by the Scottish National Party as an amendment to the government’s king’s speech setting out its legislative program. The amendment called for an immediate cease-fire in the conflict between Israel and Hamas, as well for the release of all hostages held by the latter.
Both Starmer and the U.K. government have so far rejected calls for a full cessation of the fighting, instead hugging close to the U.S. position of calling for limited humanitarian “pauses.” In a speech last month, he argued a full cease-fire would “freeze the conflict and embolden Hamas to re-arm for another, October 7-style, attack.
Starmer has come under particular pressure for this position — pressure that came to the fore when a huge number of his parliamentary party and a handful of his top team effectively voted against his wishes in Wednesday’s vote.
Earlier in the day, a spokesperson for the Labour leader made clear any frontbenchers who voted for the SNP motion would be sacked. The opposition party followed through on this threat later in the day.
The sack list
Three separate shadow ministers — Afzal Khan, Helen Hayes and Naz Shah — called for an immediate cease-fire during the parliamentary debate leading up to the vote.
“Despite all the risk to our personal positions, we must do what is right,” Shah said as she called on fellow MPs to vote for a cease-fire — in the process effectively resigning her position as a shadow Home Office minister.
“We need a full and immediate ceasefire now. My constituents have demanded this and I will not refuse them. Supporting a ceasefire is the very least we can do,” Khan told the Commons.
Rather than waiting for Starmer to sack them, several frontbenchers including Khan and Yasmin Qureshi, shadow equalities minister, stepped down from their posts before the vote took place.
In her resignation letter tweeted Wednesday, Jess Phillips said she voted with her “constituents, my head, and my heart which has felt as if it were breaking over the last four weeks with the horror of the situation in Israel and Palestine.”
In an effort to deter colleagues from voting for the motion, Labour tabled — and ordered its MPs to vote for — a rival amendment urging longer pauses in the fighting to deliver aid.
But the amendment failed to stem the flow of the major rebellion which hit Starmer. Labour confirmed shortly after the vote that all 10 senior figures who voted with the SNP had left the party’s frontbench.
“I regret that some colleagues felt unable to support the position tonight,” Starmer said in a statement.
“But I wanted to be clear about where I stood, and where I will stand. Leadership is about doing the right thing. That is the least the public deserves. And the least that leadership demands,” he added.
Also speaking in the debate, the Liberal Democrat MP Layla Moran told the chamber that earlier in the day she lost a family member in Gaza.
“They didn’t, I’m afraid, die of a bomb. Instead they died, perhaps for lack of food, perhaps of dehydration. Their health deteriorated in the last and they couldn’t get to the hospital they needed,” the MP of Palestinian heritage said.
“I urge colleagues from all sides to bear in mind this is more than party politics,” she added.
