Fabian Hamilton, a candidate with Britain’s Labour Party, has broken ranks by claiming arms sales to Israel and Saudi Arabia will stop if the party takes power, The Telegraph reported.
Hamilton, who was a shadow foreign minister under Labour leader Keir Starmer until last year, made the comments during a hustings at the Baab-Ul-Ilm mosque in Leeds.
Hamilton, who is seeking re-election in Leeds North East, was asked during a panel event on Thursday “should we be selling arms to Israel?” by a questioner who accused Israel of genocide.
“On the issue of arms sales, if we win the election next week we will stop arms sales to Israel immediately,” he replied.
“We don’t supply a huge number of arms, but we will stop them because we’re complicit if we don’t. We will also stop arms sales to Saudi Arabia, which is our largest client,” continued Hamilton, who said Labour needed to be “consistent” in its foreign policy.
“If we’re stopping arms sales to Israel, which we will, we’ve been very clear about that, we will stop arms sales to Saudi Arabia, which we should have done some time ago,” he said.
“Obviously some people believe that Starmer’s a liar but it’s actually David Lammy who’s introduced this policy. Hopefully he will be foreign secretary if we win the election and he has been very clear about implementing this. I know [him] much better than I know Starmer, and I know Lammy will actually do what he says,” continued Hamilton.
The Telegraph noted that last month, Lammy urged the Government to suspend the sale of weapons to Israel that could be used in an assault on Rafah.
When asked by Bloomberg whether a Labour government would publish advice relating to arms sales about whether Israel has broken international law, Starmer declined to do so.
Starmer in February set out a new position on Gaza as he backed calls for an “immediate” ceasefire in an attempt to stave off a further damaging backbench rebellion.
He resisted calls for a truce following Hamas’ October 7 terror attacks, insisting Israel had a right to defend itself.
Starmer later went on to back “humanitarian pauses” and a “sustainable” ceasefire, before calling for an immediate cessation of hostilities on February 20.
Labour declined to comment on Hamilton’s comments.
Starmer took over as Labour leader after former leader Jeremy Corbyn stepped down. Under Corbyn, Labour came under fire both over Corbyn’s own antisemitism as well as the rise in anti-Jewish rhetoric within the party.
After stepping down as leader, Corbyn was later suspended from Labour following the publication of a report which found numerous cases where the party leadership under Corbyn underplayed, belittled or ignored complaints by Jewish members, and sometimes actively interfered to support political allies.
Starmer apologized shortly after being elected for how the Labour Party has handled antisemitism within its ranks and committed to making change.