SPIKED
Andy Burnham’s shameful pandering to anti-Israel bigots
Brendan O’Neill
July 10, 2026

Here he comes, pandering Andy Burnham. The King of the North throwing out the red meat of Israelophobia to keep certain voters sweet. The incoming PM yapping piously about Israel’s possible ‘war crimes’ in a bid to win back restive Muslim voters and the keffiyeh classes who’ve abandoned Labour for the crackpot Greens. That’s what I saw in Burnham’s staggeringly pompous digital sermon on Gaza – not an act of geopolitical conviction but a masterclass in demographic toadying. It was in a video chat with the Guardian – where else? – that Burnham promised to get tough on Israel when he succeeds Keir Starmer as PM this month. In classic therapy-speak, he acknowledged that ‘Labour’s initial response to the treatment of Gaza caused huge hurt’. Hurt to who? Those mobs who swarmed our streets after 7 October hollering for further holy war against the Jewish State? Cry me a river. ‘We got it wrong and I am sorry for that’, he said in his clinical-feeling mea culpa. READ MORE