ASKED last month on BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme about surveillance flights over Gaza from RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus, David Lammy stated: “We are not assisting, and it would be quite wrong for the British government to assist, in the prosecution of this war in Gaza. We are not doing that, and we would never do that.”

As anyone who has paid attention to how the British government has responded to the carnage will know, this is weapons-grade BS from Britain’s Foreign Secretary. With the government going to great lengths to hide or downplay their support, I thought it would be useful to set out 10 ways the governing elite has backed Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

1. Public statements in support of Israel’s assault on Gaza

A week after the October 7 2023, attack on Israel, the then prime minister Rishi Sunak voiced “unequivocal” British support for Israel — “not just today, not just tomorrow, but always.”

A few days earlier, Keir Starmer, then leader of the Labour Party in opposition, told LBC Radio: “Israel has the right” to withhold power and water from Palestinian civilians (adding “obviously, everything should be done within international law”).

It seems this wasn’t a mistake — asked on BBC Newsnight the next day: “Do you think cutting off food, water and electricity is within international law,” then shadow attorney general Emily Thornberry answered: “I think Israel has an absolute right to defend itself against terrorists.”

These statements were made after senior Israeli government figures made what many argue were statements of genocidal intent, including Israel’s then defence minister, Yoav Gallant, who announced “a complete siege on [Gaza]: no electricity, no food, no water, no fuel” because “We are fighting human animals and we act accordingly.”

2. Diplomatic visits

Senior British government figures have made several diplomatic visits to Israel and received Israeli government figures in Britain, conferring legitimacy on the Israeli government. “Britain stands with you,” Prime Minister Sunak said to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu when he travelled to Israel in October 2023.

Lammy travelled to Israel in July 2024, meeting with Netanyahu and Israeli President Isaac Herzog (shortly after October 7, the latter said: “It is an entire nation out there that is responsible. It’s not true this rhetoric about civilians not aware, not involved. It’s absolutely not true”). Lammy also met with the Israeli foreign minister, Gideon Sa’ar, in London in April 2025.

3. Continuing to arm Israel

Published in May, a joint report by Palestinian Youth Movement, Workers For A Free Palestine and Progressive International, based on data from the Israeli tax authority, found Britain sent thousands of military goods to Israel between October 2023 and March 2025, including a shipment of 150,000 bullets.

Under public pressure, the Starmer government suspended 30 of the 350 existing arms export licences to Israel in September 2024. Components for the F-35 fighter jets used by Israel to bomb Gaza were excluded from the suspension, supposedly because they are part of a shared global parts pool.

However, the report found direct shipments of F-35 parts from Britain to Israel were ongoing as of March 2025. Moreover, citing new export licensing figures, in May Campaigns Against Arms Trade (CAAT) revealed “Britain approved licences for £127.6 million worth of military equipment to Israel in single issue licences between October to December 2024,” with the majority of these licences for military radars, components, software and targeting equipment. “This is a massive increase, with the figure in this three-month period totalling more than 2020-2023 combined,” CAAT notes.

4. Using RAF Akrotiri to support Israel

According to Declassified UK, the RAF has carried out more than 500 spy flights from RAF Akrotiri over Gaza since October 2023. “Intelligence gathered by undisclosed RAF aircraft and other British assets in the region is being handed over to the Israeli military, so it has up-to-date information on the movement of captured Israelis,” the Times recently reported.

However, the newspaper also quoted retired Major General Charlie Herbert, who served in the British Army for 35 years: “It’s all good and proper saying they are handing over intelligence for the purposes for locating hostages, but in reality that intelligence is just as likely to be used as targeting for Hamas and others.”

In November 2023 Declassified UK noted: “Britain’s Cyprus base has become international military hub supporting Israel’s bombing campaign in Gaza,” citing a recent report from Israeli newspaper Haaretz that revealed: “The US has in recent days delivered large amounts of equipment and arms to the British air force base in Cyprus: About 20 heavy-transport aircraft have landed there in a very short period with cargo from strategic depots belonging to the US and Nato in Europe.”

In October 2024, Declassified UK revealed that US special forces flights to Israel from RAF Akrotiri “have doubled in frequency” since Starmer became prime minister, with at least 13 US planes used by special forces, nearly all of them unmarked, making the journey.

5. Training and meetings with the Israeli military

In July, Declassified UK revealed “Israeli army officers have been allowed to study at a British military academy in central London throughout the Gaza genocide,” with at least two Israeli colonels attending the Royal College of Defence Studies since 2023.

“Britain’s most senior military figures have already made at least five unpublicised visits to Israel since October 2023,” the investigative news website noted in February. There have also been visits from the Israeli military to Britain, including Israeli General Oded Basyuk, head of the Israel Defence Forces Operations Directorate, who was given special diplomatic immunity to meet with the Ministry of Defence, Foreign Office, and Cabinet Office in January.

6. Continuation of trade with Israel

The Department for Business and Trade estimates the “total trade in goods and services (exports plus imports) between Britain and Israel was £5.8 billion in the four-quarters to the end of the first-quarter of 2025.”

In their January submission to the inquiry of the British Parliament’s foreign affairs select committee into the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the NGOs War on Want and Global Justice Now explained: “Negotiations for [a new Free Trade Agreement] have continued throughout Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, with Britain recommitting to further talks in July 2024.” Though these negotiations were suspended in May, trade between Britain and Israel continues, with the British government ignoring calls for broad trade sanctions.

7. Protecting Israel at the UN

Taking its lead from the US, Britain has acted as Israel’s protector at the UN. In the six months after October 7, Britain repeatedly abstained on draft resolutions at the UN security council that called for humanitarian pauses and ceasefires in Gaza. In October 2023, the UN general assembly adopted a motion for an “immediate, durable and sustainable humanitarian truce” in Gaza.

Again, Britain abstained, as it did in September 2024 when the general assembly voted overwhelmingly to direct Israel to leave the Palestinian occupied territories within a year. Now lost down the memory hole, in February 2024, the Guardian reported “the US and Britain are expected to be alone at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) hearings in urging restraint in its ruling on Israel’s occupation.”

8. Protecting Israel in the British Parliament

In November 2023, the Scottish National Party presented a motion in the House of Commons calling for a ceasefire in Gaza. The Tory government voted against. Starmer’s Labour Party abstained, with the exception of 56 Labour MPs who opposed the motion. “Labour officials had said in advance that any frontbencher ... would be sacked for backing the amendment,” the Guardian reported at the time.

Asked in the House of Commons in October 2024 whether Israel was committing genocide in Gaza, Lammy responded that “these are legal terms, and they must be determined by international courts,” before arguing: “The way that people are now using those terms undermines their seriousness,” citing the Holocaust and the Rwandan genocide.

9. Threatening the International Criminal Court

In June, Middle East Eye reported that in April 2024: “The British government privately threatened to defund and withdraw from the International Criminal Court if it issued arrest warrants for Israeli leaders.”

Based on “information from a number of sources” including former staff at the ICC “familiar with the conversation and who have seen the minutes of the meeting,” the news website noted the then British foreign secretary David Cameron told Karim Khan, the British chief prosecutor of the court, that applying for warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant would be “like dropping a hydrogen bomb.”

The threat didn’t work — in November 2024, Khan issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant, as well as for three Hamas leaders.

10. Repressing pro-Palestine protests in Britain

In November 2023, then Tory home secretary Suella Braverman called the pro-Palestine demonstrations “hate marches” before (unsuccessfully) attempting to ban the march taking place on Armistice Day by applying significant pressure on the Metropolitan Police Commissioner.

In January 2025, more than 70 pro-Palestinian demonstrators, including Jeremy Corbyn, John McDonnell and protest organisers Chris Nineham from Stop the War and Ben Jamal from Palestine Solidarity Campaign, were arrested taking part in a mass protest in Whitehall after they allegedly broke through a police line.

More recently, Starmer’s government proscribed the direct-action group Palestine Action as a terrorist group. Showing support for the group could now lead to 14 years in prison. All of this points to a clear pattern of the government trying to suppress and weaken the movement in support of Palestine.

The pro-Palestine movement has impacted British government policy

It is worth noting the Starmer government has become more critical of Israel in recent months. But rather than evidence of our rulers suddenly locating their conscience, any change in rhetoric or policy is almost certainly largely down to pressure from the pro-Palestine movement and wider public opinion.

With some now arguing Britain is a participant in the ongoing genocide, Starmer, Lammy, and other senior British government figures should be very nervous — Article 3 of the 1948 Genocide Convention lists “complicity in genocide” as one of the crimes that can be punished under the convention.

Follow Ian on X @IanJSinclair.