LIKE some twisted version of the infamous Piranha Brothers Monty Python sketch, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer actually told the besieged people of Gaza that he would recognise Palestine as a state only as long as Israeli forces were still starving and bombing them come the September deadline he imposed.

The Pythons riffed off the notorious East End gangsters, the Kray twins in creating the Piranhas, who threatened to beat up their victims if they paid them protection money (or not to, if they didn’t).

But the only one laughing here is Benjamin Netanyahu. At the current rate of slaughter in Gaza and the Occupied West Bank by the Israeli forces — whether through starvation, shootings or bombings — the Israeli prime minister knows there could well be few Palestinians left alive by September to occupy an independent state of their own.

As if the hundreds of thousands of people who almost instantly signed on to support a new left party weren’t indication enough of how deeply the Starmer government has managed to bury the Labour Party, the Prime Minister’s remarks sent his government further into the abyss.

“Now, in Gaza, because of a catastrophic failure of aid, we see starving babies, children too weak to stand: images that will stay with us for a lifetime,” Starmer said brazenly.

But these are not “images”. These are the lives of real people that were ended, not by a “failure of aid,” but by the failure of Starmer’s own government to cease arming Israel 22 months ago when its genocidal intentions were already apparent, and to call on the US to do the same.

Starmer’s pointless pandering to US President Donald Trump as he toured Trump’s Scottish golf courses last weekend — a venture the BBC described as “invaluable face time with Trump” — swiftly blew back in his face. Trump bluntly dismissed Starmer’s bargaining chip, telling him “you’re rewarding Hamas if you do that, and I don’t think they should be rewarded.”

As always, the White House response was scripted by Israel, whose prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, offered the identical admonition. “Starmer rewards Hamas’s monstrous terrorism and punishes its victims,” Netanyahu said.

The image that will indeed stay with us for a lifetime will be the inaction of Britain and the US to prevent the catastrophe we now see before us.

In this latest act of craven cowardice — an utter failure by Starmer to own his share of the responsibility for this tragedy — he has further eroded what little support he and his party have left.

Starmer’s callous strategy is no real surprise as it was flagged up for us 18 months ago as reported on these pages and well before the election that brought his party back to power.

That was when then shadow Foreign Office minister Wayne David said Labour would “recognise the state of Palestine at a point which will help the peace process once negotiations between Israel and Palestine and the others are taking place.”

Such an outcome, said David, a member of Labour Friends of Israel, could only come to “fruition in a way which is acceptable to the state of Israel.”

“Palestinian statehood is not a bargaining chip,” former Labour leader and independent MP Jeremy Corbyn responded to Starmer’s announcement. “It is not a threat. It is an inalienable right of the Palestinian people. Our demands on this shameful government remain the same: end all arms sales to Israel, impose widespread sanctions, and stop the genocide, now.”

“Starmer threatening to recognise Palestine only if Israel [misbehaves] is colonial arrogance,” said Myriam Kane, co-founder of the Black Liberation Alliance. “The UK helped create this crisis from the Balfour Declaration to arming Israel today. Palestine’s statehood isn’t Britain’s to grant or withhold. This is imperialism, repackaged.”

In a statement posted online the Green Party said: “Keir Starmer is using Palestinian lives as a bargaining chip by only recognising Palestinian statehood on certain conditions. Playing cynical political games during a genocide is shameful. The UK government should recognise the state of Palestine now.”

“It’s Labour’s genocide too,” said newly independent MP Zarah Sultana, who together with Corbyn and grassroots supporters is working to build the new left party. “While children starve to death, Keir Starmer refuses to expel the Israeli ambassador, impose full trade sanctions, enforce a full arms embargo or end surveillance flights,” she added.

If any further metrics were needed to assess just how far the Labour Party has plummeted in popularity, along came this July 30 update from Corbyn about progress building his new party, temporarily referred to as “Your Party.”

“Yesterday, I published an article about yourparty.uk,” Corbyn posted on X with characteristically wry humour. “I want to issue a public correction and a sincere apology for an error. In that article, I said 500,000 people had signed up. That was incorrect. It is now 600,000 — and counting. Real change is coming.”

Linda Pentz Gunter is a writer based in Takoma Park, Maryland.