Leo Pearlman is a London based producer and a loud and proud Zionist. His most recent film about the Oct 7 Nova Music Festival massacre, ‘We Will Dance Again’ has won the 2025 Emmy of the 46th Annual News & Documentary Awards for most ‘Outstanding Current Affairs Documentary’.
In a recent piece I suggested that Britain suffers from a broken moral operating system. By that, I mean a way of thinking that increasingly rewards symbolism over substance, political expediency over moral clarity and gestures over genuine leadership. The debate around Israel is not the cause of that operating system, it is simply one of its clearest manifestations.
If that article was a diagnosis, this one is about a treatment. Not the only treatment, there are many. Nor is it one that, by itself, will reprogramme an entire country’s moral operating system, but it is one that sits entirely within our own control.
I argue that Britain’s Jewish community should draw a line in the sand with our new Prime Minister, Andy Burnham. Not reject him, not embrace him. Engage with him, meet him, challenge him, listen to him and allow him to listen to us. But until his words change and are matched by actions, don’t pretend that our relationship is cosy.
Trust should be earned.
Some readers may interpret that as an argument against engagement, it isn’t. In fact, I believe Britain’s Jewish community should engage with politicians more than ever before. The question isn’t whether we engage, it’s how.
Last week provided the perfect illustration of why that distinction matters.
The Government announced a £250 million package to strengthen the security of Britain’s Jewish community.
The investment is unquestionably welcome. Protecting Jewish schools, synagogues and community institutions is not an act of generosity by government, but one of government’s most fundamental responsibilities. Every British citizen has the right to educate their children, attend their place of worship and participate in public life without fear of intimidation or violence.
The funding deserved our support. What troubled me wasn’t the policy, it was everything that surrounded it.
The announcement was accompanied by a reception in Downing Street attended by many of the organisations representing Britain’s Jewish community. There were speeches, photographs, handshakes, public expressions of gratitude. There were gifts presented to a departing Prime Minister in recognition of what was described as his contribution to Britain’s Jewish community.
By every appearance, it was a celebration, a thank you and I found myself asking a question that I suspect many did also.
Did Keir Starmer really need one final photo opportunity?
The question isn’t whether ministers should meet Jewish leaders, of course they should. Nor is it whether Jewish organisations should engage with government, they absolutely should. The question is why either of those things require a public celebration.
Why couldn’t the funding simply have been announced? Why couldn’t implementation have been discussed privately? Why couldn’t Britain’s Jewish organisations have welcomed the investment whilst continuing to hold the Government publicly to account for everything that remains unresolved?
After all, this is the same Prime Minister whose Government recognised a Palestinian Arab "state" without first requiring Hamas to release every hostage still held in terror tunnels. The same Prime Minister under whom Britain’s Jewish community has endured almost two years of weekly hate marches. The same Prime Minister under whose leadership Jewish life in Britain has become objectively less safe.
That last point matters more than any other, because whenever Keir Starmer’s record is discussed, the conversation inevitably turns to his character. We’re told he is a good man, that he is decent, well intentioned, genuinely cares about Britain’s Jewish community. That, privately, he has real shown empathy, compassion and understanding.
Perhaps all of that is true, but I have to be honest, I’m tired of hearing it and I truly don’t care.
Not because intentions don’t matter, they do, but because they are not how political leaders should ultimately be judged. Outcomes are and by the only measure that ultimately matters to me, Jewish life in Britain is objectively less safe today than it was when Keir Starmer walked into Downing Street.
Jewish schools, synagogues and communal events require levels of security that would once have been unimaginable. Families now make calculations about how visibly Jewish they can safely be in public that they simply did not have to make before. Antisemitic attacks have become more regular and more violent. Those are not matters of perception, they are matters of reality.
So whether Keir Starmer is kind, compassionate or genuinely well intentioned is, for me, beside the point. His intentions, his character, his empathy do not make Jewish life safer. Only outcomes do and for Britain’s Jewish community, outcomes are the only standard by which political leadership should ultimately be judged.
None of that disappeared because of one funding announcement, nor should it. The £250 million deserved our support, whether the accompanying public celebration did is an entirely different question. But let’s also be clear about why that £250m is in part so desperately needed, it’s because of the failings of Starmer and his Government to protect our community in the first place.
Engagement and endorsement are not the same thing. The purpose of engagement is to influence politicians. The purpose of publicity is too often to improve the public standing of politicians. Those are not the same, in fact, they are often diametric opposites.
One obvious response to this argument is that many of the most important conversations already happen behind closed doors. I don’t doubt that for a second. I hope ministers are challenged robustly, that difficult conversations take place and disagreements are aired honestly. I hope relationships are built privately, because that is where genuine influence is most likely to be exercised.
Which only makes public displays even harder to understand. If the real work is already happening in private, what purpose did the public celebration serve?Why the photographs? Why the speeches? Why the gifts?
Protecting Britain’s Jewish community is not an act of generosity deserving public gratitude, it is the first duty of government. To me, the entire spectacle was uncomfortably sycophantic.
Watching communal leaders publicly celebrate and present gifts to a departing Prime Minister whose record has caused so much anguish, more than anything else made me think about the man waiting to replace him.
If Andy Burnham looks at those actions by the Jewish community, what lesson does he learn? If Keir Starmer can recognise a Palestinian "state" before demanding the release of every hostage. If he can preside over two years in which Jewish life in Britain has become objectively less safe. If he can repeatedly ask Britain’s Jewish community to trust his intentions whilst the outcomes continue to deteriorate and still leave office surrounded by gratitude, commemorative gifts and smiling photographs...
What exactly is the incentive for Andy Burnham to do better? That, surely, cannot be the incentive structure we wish to create.
If Britain’s moral operating system is ever going to change, then changing the incentives that shape political behaviour is one place where Britain’s Jewish community can make a genuine difference.
The pattern that has become increasingly familiar.
The Nova Exhibition in London provides perhaps the clearest illustration of what I mean. It exists for one purpose, to bear witness. To ensure that those who walk through its doors leave with a deeper understanding of what happened on October 7th and of the human cost that still endures today. It should never become a backdrop against which politicians begin repairing reputations they have not yet earned the right to repair.
Take Sadiq Khan. Contrary to later suggestions from City Hall, it would appear the Mayor showed little enthusiasm for visiting the exhibition while it was open. Those involved in organising it have spoken of repeated invitations and repeated attempts to find a suitable date. The only dates apparently offered came after the exhibition was due to close.
Then the issue became public, questions began to be asked, suddenly, a visit became possible. Whether that sequence of events reflected coincidence or political damage limitation is, in one sense, irrelevant.
The more important question is what happened next. Why were we so eager to provide the public rehabilitation? This is, after all, the same Mayor who has publicly concluded that Israel is committing genocide, repeatedly advocated immediate recognition of a Palestinian "state", defended the chant “From the River to the Sea", despite understanding perfectly well why so many British Jews hear in those words a call for the eradication of the world’s only Jewish state - and that is because that is exactly what it means.
None of those positions changed because he visited the Nova Exhibition, yet the visit generated precisely the images his office will have wanted. Another cheap demonstration of solidarity.
Sadiq Khan was not alone, David Lammy also visited and his visit struck me as particularly difficult to reconcile.
This is the Foreign Secretary who sat opposite Mandy Damari at a Labour Friends of Israel event, as she pleaded publicly for one thing above all else, the return of the hostages. He applauded her, he crossed the room and embraced a mother whose daughter remained in Hamas captivity.
Then a mere 3 hours later he returned to the television studios and once again called for a ceasefire without making the release of those very hostages, including Emily Damari, a condition of that ceasefire.
The Archbishop of Canterbury also visited, the leader of a Church whose recent positions on Israel have prompted fierce criticism from Britain’s Jewish community, including Chief Rabbi Sir Ephraim Mirvis.
And so the question remains for all of the above, what changed? Not the Mayor’s position, not the Foreign Secretary’s, not the Church’s, only the optics.
Are British Jews going to continue doing more of the same with Andy Burnham?
We have to distinguish far more carefully between access and endorsement. Every one of those people should have been invited, every one of them should have come, should have listened, but none of that required photographers. None of it required carefully curated social media posts, none of it required smiling photographs that inevitably become part of a politician’s public record.
Take away the cameras and almost nothing of value is lost. The conversations still happen, difficult questions still get asked, survivors are still heard, education still takes place. The only thing that disappears is the political dividend and that is precisely the point.
If someone genuinely wants to understand, they will still come, if someone genuinely wants to listen, they will still come, if someone genuinely wants to challenge their own assumptions, they will still come.
If the absence of cameras changes that calculation, we are entitled to ask whether understanding was ever the primary purpose of the visit.
The mistake I believe we British Jews have made over the past two years is confusing access with influence. Somewhere along the way, access appears to have become the objective rather than the means. The photograph has become evidence of success, the invitation has become the achievement.
None of those things are influence, they are access and access without outcomes is simply proximity to power.
Influence is changing minds, changing policy, changing outcomes. If a politician leaves a meeting thinking differently than when they arrived, that is influence. If they leave with another photograph for their social media feed while nothing else changes, it isn’t.
If the principal beneficiary of our public engagement is the politician rather than the community, then we have fundamentally misunderstood the purpose of that engagement.
If the message we send to our incoming Prime Minister, is just how low the bar is for earning the public recognition and praise of Britain's Jewish community, then we should not be surprised if that is exactly the standard to which he governs.
If that happens, our problems will no longer be entirely of someone else's making. They will, in part, be of our own.