Anti-Israel MP Zarah Sultana to remain suspended by Labour as four rebels have whip restored

Frequent critic of Israel Zarah Sultana will not be given the Labour whip back despite four of her colleagues being reinstated, the JC understands.

Sultana was among a group of seven MPs suspended in July last year for voting against the government and for a Scottish National Party (SNP) amendment calling for an end to the two-child benefit cap back in July.

Other rebels such as Bradford East MP Imran Hussein, onetime Labour leadership candidate Rebecca Long-Bailey, Leeds East MP Richard Burgon and Liverpool West Derby MP Ian Byrne have all had the whip restored, according to a report in the Mirror.

However Sultana, Apsana Begum and former shadow chancellor John McDonnell remain suspended, with their exclusion kept under review, the JC understands.

The Coventry South MP has indicated that she was not informed of the decision before the news broke and claimed she was being punished for her pro-Palestine views.

Posting on X about the announcement, she wrote: “I've just found out from this article that my whip still hasn't been restored. Turns out speaking up for Palestine is still a punishable offence.”

While suspended, in an interview with the Big Issue, Sultana accused the Labour government of being complicit in “genocide” and indicated she would likely rebel against the government in the future if she was allowed to return.

“I would want to be in a Labour Party that wasn’t complicit in genocide, that wasn’t selling arms, that wasn’t pushing austerity politics. And therefore as someone who’s still a member of the Labour Party, and hopefully a Labour MP, I have to do everything I can to take the party away from those positions. Otherwise I think I’m just giving up any responsibility,” she said.

Sultana also re-introduced a piece of legislation, the Arms Trade (Inquiry and Suspension) Bill, which she said in a post on X would “suspend all arms sales to Israel & hold the government accountable for its role in enabling such horrors”.

On the anniversary of October 7, Sultana – without mentioning Hamas – called Israel’s actions in Gaza “genocidal”, earning her a rebuke from Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer.

And in January last year, while in opposition and serving as a Labour MP, she called for the expulsion of Israel’s ambassador to the UK and attacked what she called Tzipi Hotovely’s “genocidal rhetoric”, for suggesting that Hamas’s network of underground tunnels gave legitimacy to targeting schools and mosques in Gaza.

Meanwhile, another MP who will not have the Labour whip restored, for the time being at least, is former shadow chancellor John McDonnell.

McDonnell, along with former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, were interviewed under police caution as part of an investigation into the breaching of conditions during a pro-Palestine march last month.

Apsana Begum, the MP for Poplar and Limehouse in East London, also remains suspended.

Last week, both Sultana and Begum – and 10 Labour MPs who do have the Labour whip – voted in favour of an SNP motion to require the government to publish proposals for a compensation scheme for so-called WASPI women.

Burgon, Long-Bailey and Byrne did not vote in favour of the motion.

A Labour Party spokesperson said that the party refuses to comment on disciplinary matters, which they said was a matter for the Chief Whip.

Zarah Sultana was first elected as an MP in 2019. Prior to her election, the former Labour staffer who was active in student politics.

The JC reported that, during her student days, Sultana taunted the departing vice president of the National Union of Students by claiming he did not "serve Israel as well as you would've liked."

She also suggested ex-NUS official Joe Vinson should move to Israel after he spoke out about antisemitism and support for the BDS campaign within the student movement.

Around the same time, Sultana said she had “been on a journey" to help her avoid making arguably antisemitic comments.

She said she had been "working closely with Jewish comrades who have taught me about the language and history of antisemitism” and cited a trip to Auschwitz in 2013 as helping with this leaning process.

In opposition, Rebecca Long-Bailey was sacked from Sir Keir Starmer’s frontbench after she shared a link to an interview with Maxine Peake in which the actress linked the killing of George Floyd to Israel.

She later said that she would not have retweeted the article “knowing some of its contents would cause hurt”.

In 2020, when standing to be Labour’s deputy leader, Burgon was urged to make a "total apology" for saying "Zionism is the enemy of peace".

When video footage surfaced of him saying it in a speech in 2014, he claimed he "did not recall" saying it but "it is now clear that I did and I regret doing so".