From Human Rights to War Crimes: Is Keir Starmer an Israeli Asset?
How a lawyer for the oppressed became an enabler of genocide.
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We live in an era when accusations of foreign allegiances are common political currency. Some are unfounded, and others may have validity. It is, therefore, not unreasonable to ask the question about our Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, and his support for Israel.
As of 2025, it is universally accepted that Israel is committing genocide. It is a position assumed by multiple governments around the globe, countless NGOs, the United Nations, and millions of ordinary citizens across the country, including many who voted Labour.
Why, then, does Keir Starmer, a trained human rights lawyer, refuse to see the obvious?
What is a Foreign Asset?
There is a long history of world leaders, rightly or wrongly, being accused of covert allegiances. MI5 famously suspected Harold Wilson of being a Soviet asset. Jeremy Corbyn was outrageously accused of having been a Czech agent during the Cold War, and, in America, the completely politically opposed Donald Trump and Jill Stein have both been charged with being Russian assets.
However, these examples are, for the most part, smear campaigns with little basis in reality. Yes, even the Trump one. But that isn’t to say there aren’t very real examples of foreign agents infiltrating political office. After all, what more useful asset could there be?
The now mostly forgotten Tom Driberg was a Labour MP and former chair of the party, who was at least a willing informant for the KGB and, at worst, a full-blown Soviet agent. His case shows that the line is ambiguous between being an asset, a blackmailed target, and a double-dealer. Equally, while not an MP, Anthony Blunt, who rose to the position of Surveyor of the Queen’s Pictures, was one of the Cambridge Five and passed intelligence to the USSR during the Second World War and early Cold War, showing that a foreign asset can easily be embedded into the establishment and high office.
However, perhaps most relevant is the case of Charles Hernu, French Minister of Defence under François Mitterrand. In the 1990s, after his death, Hernu was accused of having contact with the Soviet Union, with concerns being raised after the sinking of the Rainbow Warrior and his resignation. National embarrassment prevented a full and proper investigation.
These cases show that not all “assets” are spies. Many are informants, compromised individuals, or ideologically aligned. Sex, money, ideology, and ambition can all turn an individual, and political careers are no obstacle to foreign loyalty, often making them far more attractive. Equally, allegiance frequently evolves, growing from light communication or interaction and spiralling into an individual's being fully compromised.
So when we say “asset”, don’t think of James Bond creeping in the shadows of Westminster; rather, the term is a broad spectrum. More often, service to a foreign power resembles an alignment of interests.
It can take the form of:
Ideological commitment
Political convenience
Dependency on foreign lobbying or donations
Fear of losing institutional support
Or gradual assimilation into a worldview that no longer reflects one's former values
In short, being "an asset" doesn’t require secret payments or espionage. Sometimes it just means doing someone else’s bidding—knowingly or otherwise.
The Human Rights Lawyer
Somewhat shockingly, considering that many now call for his indictment at The Hague, Keir Starmer was once a respected human rights lawyer. He represented anti-death penalty cases, supported international campaigns for justice, and even attended pro-Palestine demonstrations and rallies right up until the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn.
Indeed, there is a widely spread image of him speaking at a Camden Palestine Solidarity Campaign event in March of 2015, during the leadership of Ed Miliband. It being under Milliband and not Corbyn is critical, as it could otherwise be explained away as political expedience given Corbyn’s well-known pro-Palestine position. Indeed, Starmer not only speaks at the event, but stands alongside signs calling for an end to the blockade on Gaza and showing how much land Palestinians have lost to the ever-expanding Israel.
However, does this show an accurate picture of the younger Starmer or truly show that he was pro-Palestinian in the recent past?
Before becoming an MP, Starmer was Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) from 2008–2013. He handled diplomatically sensitive cases zealously, with critics arguing that he followed the government line to the letter. However, more alarmingly, he regularly followed the interests of the security state rather than civil rights concerns. One such example is the case of Gary McKinnon, an autistic hacker accused by the US of infiltrating military systems. Starmer pledged to facilitate the extradition of the British citizen, even though McKinnon hadn’t disseminated any data at a time when US human rights abuses in places like Guantanamo Bay were well known.
It could be argued that Starmer had already begun to compromise the principles you would presume he held as a human rights lawyer long before he entered office. His early work contrasts sharply with a later emphasis at the DPP and in political office, where punishing protest and reinforcing state authority became a priority.
Put simply, the question becomes, did he ever believe in the principles of humanity? Or was his career, from day one, about opportunism and the advancement of Keir Starmer alone? And this question is essential, because if Keir Starmer has only ever been about Keir Starmer, then what else might he do to advance his career?
The Campaign Against Corbyn
There is no doubt that the Labour leadership of Jeremy Corbyn was attacked on all sides by a collection of vested interests. Conservatives attacked him, of course. As did centrists, horrified at the return of a socialism they believed Tony Blair had successfully crushed. However, the campaign against Corbyn went much deeper than that and involved not only the British state apparatus but also foreign interference from the state of Israel. Israel could not allow a pro-Palestinian leader to take charge of the United Kingdom, a world power with a seat on the UN Security Council.
In 2017, Al Jazeera’s undercover documentary The Lobby captured an Israeli embassy official, Shai Masot, discussing plans to “take down” British politicians deemed hostile to Israeli interests. Among the targets were senior members of Corbyn’s team and pro-Palestinian Labour MPs. This blatant and documented interference in British politics by a foreign state went uninvestigated and largely ignored, while the press, politicians, and centrists obsessed over Russia.
So, how was Israel going to achieve that? Corbyn, of course, faced a barrage of abuse and hate across the press and social media, with a study by the London School of Economics saying that 75% of press coverage misrepresented Corbyn up to and including the 2019 election campaign. The central argument of the campaign was, of course, that Corbyn was an antisemite, with accusations deliberately conflating anti-Zionism with antisemitism.
However, that can’t have been the sum of Israel's plans. Abuse and fake news do not “bring down” MPs.
How Keir Starmer Brought Down Jeremy Corbyn
Keir Starmer was instrumental in shaping Labour’s Brexit policy. As old school Labour, Corbyn was said to be in favour of leaving the EU, while Starmer pushed for Labour to back Remain. After the Leave vote in June 2016, Starmer was appointed Shadow Brexit Secretary, and his actions are widely seen as key in shifting Labour toward a second referendum, a move that many believe contributed heavily to the party’s catastrophic defeat in the 2019 general election.
Starmer repeatedly contradicted or pressured Jeremy Corbyn to move closer to a pro-Remain stance, especially during Labour conferences in 2018 and 2019. In 2018, he deliberately went off-script and stated from the podium that “Nobody is ruling out Remain as an option,” with the comment not being cleared by Corbyn beforehand. It was a staggering act of insubordination and a direct challenge to Corbyn, with many seeing this as the moment Starmer laid out his cards as Corbyn’s successor.
Under Starmer’s influence, Labour adopted a deeply ambiguous policy toward Brexit in their 2019 manifesto that Leave saw as a betrayal and wasn’t trusted by Remain either. The result was the massive collapse of the “Red Wall” with Tories winning in decades-old Labour strongholds. In the wake of the 2019 result, Corbyn resigned and Starmer duly became leader. He has never taken responsibility for the disastrous policy or the result of the 2019 election.
It is very easy to see Starmer’s actions as simply liberal centrism doing its job. However, it's also easy to see something more sinister at play. Starmer, in effect, weaponised Brexit for his ends, no different to Boris Johnson. Taking a Remain position alienated much of Labour's working-class base, making a collapse of support inevitable and a heavy loss at the 2019 election beyond doubt.
Are we to believe that Starmer, an intelligent man, didn't envision this outcome if he pushed the way he was pushing? We already know that Labour MPs actively sabotaged their 2017 campaign. So why would it be beyond belief that the 2019 campaign was also sabotaged to finally get Corbyn out? We also know that many like to accuse Russia of interfering in Brexit. So, if Russia is seen as plausible…
Keir Starmer’s Criminal Leadership
Once Starmer became Labour leader, there was no more pretence. His shift in position was undeniable and started almost on day one. There was, and continues to be, a purge of left-wing voices in the Labour Party, particularly those most vocal about Palestine.
In a 2020 interview, Starmer declared: “I support Zionism without qualification.”
In October 2022, a leaked Labour Party dossier revealed that Labour officials had deliberately undermined the 2017 general election campaign and withheld funds from winnable seats. These officials were not punished under Starmer’s leadership.
In 2023, he told LBC that Israel “has the right” to cut off power and water to Gaza, a policy described by UN experts as a war crime.
Under his leadership, Labour purged MPs, councillors, and candidates who voiced support for Palestine or criticised Israeli policy.
His team refused to use the word “ceasefire” while thousands of Palestinians were being killed.
Jeremy Corbyn, the party’s most prominent pro-Palestinian voice, was suspended and ultimately barred from standing as a Labour MP.
Starmer also removed MPs such as Diane Abbott, Zarah Sultana, and Apsana Begum from prominent positions, while imposing tight controls on candidate selection to ensure ideological conformity.
Palestine Action, a non-violent protest group, were declared a terrorist group in a move condemned by the United Nations. Those who protested the ban were arrested, including senior citizens and clergy members.
These are not isolated events. This paints a picture of Keir Starmer and the Labour Party's systematic campaign against the pro-Palestine movement. Rather than stand with the oppressed and victims of abuse, as Starmer was trained to do, he now stands in total alignment with a state accused of apartheid, ethnic cleansing, and genocide.
So why, with public opinion firmly against Israel and the ongoing genocide, would an intelligent individual, trained in human rights law, continue to back the apartheid state, whose leaders have been charged with war crimes? It's not a policy winning any votes, nor one making the Labour Party popular.
So, what’s the reason?
The Zionist Lobby
In November 2023, Declassified UK revealed that roughly two‑fifths of Labour’s then shadow cabinet, 13 out of 31 members, had received donations from prominent pro‑Israel donors or lobby groups, including Labour Friends of Israel (LFI) and businessman Sir Trevor Chinn,helping cement relationships that extend beyond typical partisan fundraising.
Among the beneficiaries were key policy figures, especially those responsible for foreign affairs and trade, such as Keir Starmer himself, his deputy Angela Rayner, shadow foreign secretary David Lammy, shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves, and shadow international development minister Lisa Nandy, who was once the chair of Labour Friends of Palestine. Declassified reported that Sir Trevor Chinn donated nearly £200,000 to Starmer and other shadow cabinet members. This included a £50,000 donation to Starmer’s 2020 leadership campaign, a fact that was only disclosed after he became leader.
In addition to donations, LFI has taken senior Labour MPs on Israel-funded “fact-finding missions”. Shadow cabinet members, including David Lammy, Wes Streeting, Jonathan Reynolds, and Rachel Reeves, reportedly received £17,000+ worth of travel support to Israel, often with expenses covered by the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
More than half of the shadow cabinet serve as formal supporters or officers of LFI who maintain close, often covert, ties to the Israeli embassy in London, connections also exposed in Al Jazeera’s The Lobby. It doesn’t take an expert in the security services to know that, like Russian and American embassies during the Cold War, the embassy is a front for Mossad.
So, Is Keir Starmer a Foreign Asset?
Whether Keir Starmer is a foreign asset should not be asked lightly, but should also not be dismissed out of hand. We live in an age where political allegiance is not defined simply by citizenship or party membership. Instead, it depends on who benefits from a politician's actions. Who funds them? Who do they choose to protect?
In the case of Keir Starmer, we have a man who once stood alongside banners calling for an end to the blockade of Gaza. We have a man trained in human rights law, representing death row inmates and the oppressed. Yet, this same man now praises Zionism “without qualification” and says Israel has the right to cut off water to children, expressing support for war crimes.
This is not a simple political shift in position. It is an inversion, and it speaks to a significant change, potentially one that has been influenced.
Can you, reader, in a few short years, see yourselves turning 180 degrees and becoming a Zionist?
As we all know, Starmer’s leadership has brought about an unprecedented attack on pro-Palestinian voices, frequently through authoritarianism such as the arrest of journalists, the banning of protest groups, and the silencing of free speech. He has taken significant money from pro-Israeli interests, and Labour Friends of Israel wields outsized influence inside the party. Starmer has never addressed this foreign interference, nor has he explained the vast gulf between the principles he once claimed and the positions he now enforces. These are not isolated decisions. They are the behaviour of a man who does not answer to the people or principle, but to something else.
And so, we return to the question.
Is Keir Starmer an Israeli asset?
If by “asset” we mean someone receiving covert instructions from a foreign intelligence service, we cannot say. There is no smoking gun. No secret memo.
But if by “asset” we mean a man whose actions consistently benefit a foreign state, who is surrounded by a network of donors and advisors with clear allegiances, who undermined a previous leader hostile to that state, who took power after a campaign many believe was sabotaged from within, and who now uses that power to protect Israel from criticism, then the answer is not only reasonable, it is obvious.
Whether Keir Starmer is a formal agent or an ideological servant is almost beside the point. The result is the same: he advances the interests of a foreign power, at the expense of his people, his party, and the basic tenets of international law. That makes him a danger to democracy, justice, and the millions across Britain and the world who still believe that leadership must mean something greater than ambition, obedience, or silence.
And if we are not brave enough to ask this question now, in the face of genocide, when will we?
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