This should be a pivotal moment in British history. Our political system has utterly failed to confront a genocide. 

Rather, that system has allowed the British establishment to be complicit in one of the worst horrors of our time — Israel’s two-year offensive against Palestinians, complete with ethnic cleansing, systematic attacks on schools and hospitals, and crimes against humanity.

GAZA REVEALS HOW BRITAIN IS RUN, AND WHY WE MUST CHANGE IT
The horror of Israel’s genocide exposes the UK’s oligarchic governance system, and implores us to transform our political system

MARK CURTIS AND LAURA PIDCOCK

Now, under a current supposed ceasefire, Israel is still killing Palestinians and their plight in Gaza remains dire, as the world sees the extent of the mass destruction visited on them. 

Throughout the attacks on Palestinians in Gaza, British leaders have actively cooperated with Israel in their military, trade and diplomatic policies. 

Still now, significant sanctions on Israel are completely off the government’s agenda – a striking contrast to Russia – because the establishment chooses to back Israel even in its criminality. 

There is little morality in British political and economic decision-making. But this doesn’t mean the system is “broken”; it’s working as it’s intended to. 

What we’re witnessing is the pinnacle of ministerial impunity for complicity in crimes overseas, and the utter irrelevance of human rights and international law to UK policy-making. More important to the establishment than these has been protecting Israel, and the British and Israeli arms industries. 

Gaza illustrates many deep problems in British governance and exposes the illusion that the UK is a democracy. A mass movement is needed to address ten major issues.

Most obviously, Gaza shows how Whitehall’s foreign policy-making doesn’t prioritise human life, or even take it seriously. 

From the outset in October 2023, UK ministers put their strategic alliance with Israel above the lives of dehumanised Palestinians, even as the death toll mounted in the tens of thousands. Ministers in both Conservative and Labour governments overtly apologised for obvious Israeli breaches of international law and human rights.

The government’s characterisation of Israel’s assault on Gaza simply as a war on Hamas, and the media’s reporting of the genocide through this framework, lent credence to Israel’s strategy of inflicting collective punishment on Palestinians. 

As when Israeli President Isaac Herzog – who Keir Starmer later welcomed to Downing Street – said that “an entire nation” of Palestinians was “responsible” for the October 7th attacks.

Britain’s overt public support of Israel has only been slightly refined by ministers – such as halting some arms exports – even as Israeli leaders have made plain their genocidal intent. 

Beyond Gaza, the reality is that Britain has aided many of the world’s genocides and backs most of the world’s repressive regimes, with British arms and diplomatic support helping to prop many of them up. 

Contrast the rhetoric and policy of ministers standing up for Ukrainians compared to Palestinians – ministers believe they can pick and choose whose human rights to support.

It’s basic. What we need is a foreign policy based genuinely on upholding human rights, in all circumstances, and not simply in rhetoric, and for this to be enshrined in decision-making. This priority must trump any pre-existing alliances.

Every UK government says it upholds international law but this is plainly untrue. Gaza highlights that ministers think they can behave like criminals, supporting the laws they like and ignoring those they don’t. 

Whitehall has repeatedly refused to acknowledge Israeli war crimes and given ‘special immunity’ for Israeli military leaders to visit Britain. It has done nothing to support the various international bodies demanding the UK fulfils its obligations to stop aiding Israel’s occupation policies and “prevent and punish” it, as the Genocide Convention demands. 

On the contrary, Britain has done everything to protect Israel from legal censure, again a striking contrast to Russia. Whitehall continues to fail to respond to the demand by the International Court of Justice, delivered in July last year, for states to stop aiding Israel’s illegal occupation.

In a phone call with the International Criminal Court in April 2024, then foreign secretary David Cameron even threatened to defund and withdraw from the body if it issued arrest warrants for Israeli leaders.

The UK cannot even take the step of banning trade with Israel’s settlements in the West Bank which it itself recognises as illegal – the simplest thing it could do. 

The reality that cannot be mentioned in the mainstream is that the UK is a rogue state in its foreign policies. 

We need new mechanisms to ensure governments are required to abide by international law, including the legal mechanisms it has itself signed up to. Ministers should not be able to arbitrarily decide themselves which legal mechanisms to follow and which not. 

We have to face the fact there is currently little chance of holding British ministers to account for their complicity in Israel’s genocide. The UK’s governance system has been designed so this cannot happen. 

A mediaeval concept called ‘crown immunity’ makes ministers immune from prosecution for deaths overseas, as in Palestine, or at home due to Covid or austerity. 

This concept deems that ministers cannot commit a legal wrong and do not act as persons but as agents steeped with Crown authority, and are therefore untouchable under the law.

Legal groups bringing cases against the government over Gaza are engaged in an important task but the barriers they face are enormous. This is why the International Criminal Court (ICC) has legitimacy in investigating British ministers – since they are shielded legally and politically at the domestic level. 

This ministerial immunity must end and a system of ministerial criminal accountability be introduced. The ICC should continue to be pressed to investigate British ministers for their complicity in genocide.

The majority of the British public has opposed Israel’s attack on Gaza and sympathises with the Palestinians. 

Public pressure – including dozens of big national marches – eventually forced the government to pull back (at least rhetorically) from its initial unadulterated public support for Israel’s mass attacks.  

But Whitehall only finessed its backing for Israel amid a genocide, imposing select sanctions on a couple of Israeli ministers, never applying a full arms embargo and continuing trade relations.

After tens of thousands of Palestinian deaths, and bodies around the world calling for the prosecution of Israeli ministers for crimes against humanity, the UK remains a strategic ally of Israel, and utterly opposed to significant sanctions.

When the government faced pressure from Palestine Action’s direct action targeting Israel’s largest arms company in Britain, Elbit Systems, they simply banned it.

The point is, once Whitehall has fixed its policy, there are few ways the public can influence it, and certainly not through formal mechanisms. So whilst the tone of ministers may have shifted as the genocide progressed, the UK’s actions barely changed. 

Britain has all the fancy trimmings of democracy but little of the real practice of it. UK foreign policy is in reality made by an elite few and routinely doesn’t promote the national public interest or real national security. 

Foreign policy-making needs a democratic overhaul, making it much more responsive to the public interest with major changes to the way parliament and Whitehall function.  

What is parliament for? If our elected MPs cannot collectively ensure the establishment is not complicit in genocide – the most heinous international crime – or that governments uphold international law – another basic duty – then frankly the power they have is fictitious and they’ve lost the right to represent the British people. 

MPs do not routinely hold ministers to account and have utterly failed to do so over Gaza. Only a small minority of MPs have seriously challenged the government on its spy flights for Israel and military training in the UK, for example. 

The parliamentary committee system might appear elaborate but ministers routinely escape serious questioning. Even when they are subject to occasional grillings, there’s no obligation for the government to change policy.

The Israel lobby has funded a quarter of all MPs and half of Keir Starmer’s cabinet. Yet organisations like Labour and Conservative Friends of Israel – which fund MPs to go on trips to Israel – are not even required to declare their funders.

What does a constituent do when their MP doesn’t respond to their emails, when their request to meet at surgery appointments is denied and when they go against the wishes of the majority of their constituents in parliamentary votes? 

Barring a general election there are very few mechanisms at the disposal of UK citizens to formally hold their MP to account for their actions between elections. 

MPs failing to challenge British backing for Israel’s genocide should be booted out of office by the electorate. Many appear to need educating to understand Britain’s legal obligations. 

But ensuring ministerial accountability demands the introduction of a far greater formal role for the public, not elitist parliamentary committees, in scrutinising and influencing government policy. 

The UK system thrives on official secrecy, the chief currency of Whitehall which has been described as the ‘English disease’. 

We put up with the extreme state of official secrecy only because we’ve so far had to, because there has been no serious attempt by a political party to open up the system and make it less secretive. 

We’re not allowed to know anything about GCHQ or MI6 intelligence collaboration with Israel. The government won’t even publish its secret 2020 military agreement with Israel or the formal legal advice it has received on Israel’s breaches of international humanitarian law. 

Ministers are consistently allowed to stonewall or fail completely to answer basic questions from elected MPs in parliament. And all this is considered entirely normal.

We have to finally address this ‘national security’ bullshit which all governments hide behind. There’s no public right to know in Britain for the obvious reason this would expose ministers to greater accountability, which they want to avoid at all costs.

The paternalistic notion that the public should be prevented from having access to many more details of government behaviour for our own ‘good’ must be ended. Trust in the intelligence services, ministers, MPs and the police has to be earned; in the last two years this trust has been severely damaged. 

Whitehall must be forced to end this hyper-secrecy and introduce a much more open system of government in the public interest.

Gaza clearly shows the media routinely function as de facto assets of the state, amplifying its views and failing to adequately report independent or contradictory narratives. 

Compare Declassified’s numerous revelations about the extent to which the UK has been supporting Israel with Britain’s ‘mainstream’ national media, which regularly parrots Israeli propaganda. 

Some media outlets became somewhat critical of UK/Israeli policy in early 2025 – a year and half into the genocide – probably as they realised they’d lost touch with their readers, and dutifully following the government’s lead.  

Britain’s ‘mainstream’ media have been exposed by the information coming straight from reporters in Gaza, detailing the hourly horrors of the atrocities. Footage showing the reality of Israeli strategy has been put in people’s hands through social media in the world’s first live-streamed genocide. 

Public anger with the way the legacy media have reported on the genocide is palpable. 

But there’s little genuine media accountability in the UK and outlets routinely publish false information with no comeback. Stronger democratic regulation that promotes higher media standards, whilst of course preserving free speech, is needed.

But mainly, legacy media should be given funerals by the public. All independent bodies – such as the unions and NGOs – should stop collaborating with ‘mainstream’ outlets and support and invest in independent public interest media.

A foreign power wielding undue influence over UK politics is neither democratic nor acceptable – it’s why many people voted for Brexit. The government is rightly keen to prevent influence from states like Russia or China but actively welcomes it from Israel.

Perhaps many people have been shocked at how the UK government has defended Israel during a genocide. Yet revealing the extent of the Israel lobby in Britain and Israeli influence over policy-making is still a taboo subject in the national media. 

Figures and groups in the Israel lobby in Britain have been shown to fund an extraordinary array of MPs, hold off-the-books meetings with ministers, lobby the government to secure policy changes, and wield undue influence over the media and political agenda.  

We would need to have a public enquiry into Israel’s influence in Britain – except most such enquiries are stitch-ups. 

So independent organisations must ourselves expose the power and activities of this lobby, and force democratic changes through campaigning. 

Britain’s kow-towing to Israel is substantially due to Whitehall’s unwillingness to offend the US, for whom support for Israel is a cardinal feature of foreign policy. This again shows that Britain is not truly an independent state.

Perhaps few needed reminding of this, especially those who lived through Tony Blair’s defiance of the public to work alongside Washington in the illegal 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Starmer has continued the British tradition of backing nearly every illegal action abroad undertaken by the US, such as its military attacks on Iran in June. 

The US is believed to have deployed nuclear arms in Britain this year, but incredibly the public has no right to know: the UK government refused to answer MPs’ questions on the subject. And Keir Starmer’s plan to spend £1bn of public money buying US fighter jets armed with nuclear bombs seems to be purely a political decision to please Washington.

The government is increasing military spending while there are 14.3m people living in poverty in the UK, including 4.3m children, the number of homeless children in England is the highest since records began, and 2.89 million emergency food parcels are being distributed by Trussell alone. No end to austerity is in sight. 

Tragically, UK officials still prioritise Britain’s ‘great power’ status in their foreign policy, a process which leads to acting as Washington’s willing lapdog whatever the domestic or international costs. 

The taboo surrounding the questioning of the special relationship must end; the country must have a mature discussion about Britain’s relations with Washington and what an independent foreign policy would look like.

The government’s willingness to shelve some of our democratic rights on the altar of backing a foreign state, and one engaged in genocide, is an alarming sign of establishment priorities. 

Faced with major opposition to its policies, the government has resorted to policing the opposition to them and in restricting civil liberties. The clampdown on the right to protest has included repeated attempts to restrict protest routes and the police questioning MPs under caution for breaching protest “conditions”. This shows elite contempt for free speech and reveals also the weakness of the establishment’s arguments. 

Even worse has been raiding the homes of protest leaders and journalists for pro-Palestinian views. This puts protecting the state’s complicity in genocide, and Israeli interests, above the public’s right to challenge them.

People have been made to fear their own actions. The disciplinary action against workers for opposing genocide, the venue bookings which have been cancelled, the malicious complaints to professional regulatory bodies, the complaints to employers about social media posts, people being asked to take off pin badges from their work lapels – this behaviour mirrors the state in rejecting political argument in favour of instilling fear. 

The way the state has behaved and the cultural ramifications for us all has contributed to a rancid atmosphere where people sometimes feel they cannot argue their political point free from consequence.  

This rising authoritarianism must be resisted and a new commitment be enshrined in Britain to reassert civil liberties and free speech. 

The establishment will not concede any of these changes willingly. It is obvious to say, but the UK needs an organised movement against war, militarism and impunity. 

The last two years have seen an explosion of activity in support of Palestinian liberation and against the genocide. Repeated demonstrations have sometimes seen hundreds of thousands of people take to the streets, but even this has been the tip of the iceberg. 

Thousands of people have been brought into a burgeoning movement, new connections have been made, people have developed organising skills, and have been exposed to anti-imperialist politics. 

People have used their art, music and their crafts to make their point and raise money, organised encampments at universities, and defeated some MPs in the 2024 general election based on their inaction on the genocide. 

But while these activities have certainly made their mark, UK complicity in the genocide endured. These last two years should cause a sober assessment of how the state responds to challenges and what is necessary to defeat the British war machine.

A new progressive community should, among other things, work more inclusively rather than exclusively and attempt to popularise anti-imperialist and anti-war struggles, and should connect these to the major public concerns of the age, such as poverty, housing, cuts to public services, and environmental collapse. 

At the same time, we need to be reconstituting and defending free speech and other important civil liberties presently under attack.   

Crucially, we must also nurture and support independent media, which are the only outlets exposing the establishment, government and corporations.

https://www.declassifieduk.org/gaza-reveals-how-britain-is-run-and-why-we-must-change-it/

YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT — SINCE 2005.

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.