Starmer rejects ‘genocide’ claim and scolds pro-Gaza MP

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer rejected calls to describe Israel’s military action against Hamas in Gaza as genocide.

At Prime Minister’s Questions (PMQs) on Wednesday, independent MP for Birmingham Perry Bar Ayoub Khan, elected on an explicitly pro-Palestine stance, said in the House of Commons that “that genocide is not about numbers. It's about intent. And the intent of the Israeli government and the IDF has been explicitly clear in words and inactions over the past 400 days”.

There were, he said, “more than 45,000 innocent men, women and children killed”, without mentioning that those casualty figures, provided by the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry, do not distinguish between terrorists and civilians.

Khan made reference to the fact that two weeks ago both Foreign Secretary David Lammy and Starmer himself had rejected the use of the term “genocide” to describe Israel’s actions in Gaza and urged Starmer to “share his definition of genocide with this House”.

The prime minister then scolded the independent MP and said: “It would be wise to start a question like that by reference to what happened in October of last year”, to cheers from the Labour backbenches, referring to Hamas’s atrocities on October 7.

Starmer went on: “I'm well aware of the definition of genocide, and that is why I've never referred to it as genocide.”

Khan was one of four new independent MPs elected at July’s general election on explicitly pro-Gaza platforms.

The JC reported that Khan has publicly questioned the evidence of Hamas’s atrocities on October 7. In videos posted to social media platform TikTok he questioned the accuracy of Israeli reports, saying he had yet to see evidence that any of the terror group’s members had beheaded babies or committed rape.

Also at PMQs, Reform UK leader Nigel Farage, jokingly said he “was sure the Prime Minister and the whole House would wish to congratulate Donald Trump” on his “landslide” election victory in the US presidential election.

After some commotion and jeering from some MPs which required the intervention of the Speaker, Farage, MP for Clacton in Essex, spoke of a third attempted assassination against Donald Trump “charges have been laid, and behind it are Iran's Revolutionary Guards” (IRGC).

“Has the time not come, Prime Minister, to proscribe what is so obviously a terrorist organisation, and in doing so, not just do the right thing, but maybe mend some fences between this government and the incoming Presidency of Donald Trump’s?”, asked Farage, referring to several tweets criticising the president-elect made by members of the cabinet while they were in opposition.

Starmer joked that he was happy to see Farage make a “rare appearance back in Britain” in the chamber, and because Farage had spent so much time in America the prime minister was “half-expecting to see him on the immigration statistics”. 

He added that he had congratulated Trump last week.

On Iran, the prime minister said that the point raised by Farage was “very serious” and that the government “will work across the House and with our allies on it” and that the question of proscribing the IRGC was kept “under review.”