In his first major foreign policy move as Prime Minister, Andy Burnham – along with his hapless sidekick, Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband – has managed to trigger a major international incident that threatens to leave Britain poorer, less secure and weaker overseas.

Yesterday, Miliband got to his feet in Parliament to announce swingeing sanctions against Israeli settlements, measures that many fear will effectively become a full boycott of Israel.

At a stroke, he managed to cast into doubt our bilateral relationship with the region’s only democracy – which brings thousands of jobs and billions of pounds into our economy, not to mention collaborations on security, military hardware and tech – and infuriate the White House, which is preparing to retaliate, probably with a trade war.

Yesterday, Israel’s immediate response was to close our consulate in Jerusalem and exclude Britain from the group of countries trying to rebuild Gaza. We may also see growing support for Argentina’s erroneous claim on the Falkland Islands from erstwhile allies, provoked by our needless act of hostility.

We will end up poorer, not only because of losing Israeli business but also wealth from America. Thirty-eight US states have adopted laws or policies that penalise anyone boycotting Israel; that’s before we even consider the spectre of Donald Trump’s famous tariffs.

For what? Jewish residents of the West Bank number about 530,000, of whom a few hundred are extremists; of these, under 100 are thought to be hardcore violent thugs. They are, of course, reprehensible. But on the whole, Israel is by far the freest society in the region, for Muslims as well as Jews and Christians.

Where else would you find Pride month being celebrated in the Middle East? Or Muslim women participating freely in society? Or Christians living their lives in safety and happiness? Answer: Nowhere.

By comparison, that fragile democracy is surrounded by authoritarian, corrupt and failing states as far as the eye can see. Many of them harbour tens of thousands of jihadists, whose bloodlust for infidels draws little distinction between an Israeli or a Briton.

Israel may indeed have made mistakes in fighting this defensive war that was thrust upon it on October 7, 2023. Many civilians have died as the Israel Defence Forces have desperately tried to destroy Hamas terrorists hiding behind the population.

And the government in Jerusalem certainly contains several far-Right ideologues, the sorry result of Israel’s proportional representation system.

But these are the struggles of a friend and ally, not the hallmarks of an enemy. Hamas and Islamic Jihad, on the other hand, or the rabble-rousing administration in Ramallah – which still pays incentives to convicted terrorists – or the despotic regimes elsewhere in the region hardly have our best interests at heart.

When did Palestinian intelligence services last save British lives? When did Palestinian trade boost our economy, or Palestinian tech strengthen our Armed Forces or NHS?

By some counts, however, since the atrocities of October 7, Britain has rolled out no fewer than eight hostile measures against Jerusalem, and not a single one against Ramallah, the Palestinian capital in the West Bank, or even Hamas. Last year, the UK even recognised a ‘state of Palestine’ while emaciated Israeli hostages were languishing in the tunnels under Gaza; evidently, it did not occur to the Starmer government to demand their release first.

That recognition would have been music to the ears of Miliband, who whipped his MPs to vote in favour of it as long ago as 2014, when he was Labour leader. A certain Andy Burnham, then Shadow secretary of state for health, voted with him.

In the wake of the Prime Minister’s monumental act of national self-harm yesterday, Tory leader Kemi Badenoch called him ‘Corbyn in all but name’, while former prime minister Liz Truss branded this Government an ‘Islamist-appeasing disgrace’ in a post shared by the Israeli foreign ministry.

So what is really going on? Look no further than an anonymous Labour MP, who revealed that Burnham was bounced into it by ‘muppet’ backbenchers who were ‘freaked out’ by pressure from Gaza fanatics and worried about the Green Party pinching their seats. It was all about domestic politics, in other words.

Suddenly, it all makes sense: with a by-election looming in Holborn and St Pancras, Keir Starmer’s old constituency, and a strong local presence from the Greens, the sanctions on Israel were mysteriously fast-tracked.

Only it doesn’t make sense, does it? Turning on our foremost regional ally in its hour of need for the sake of virtue-signalling to anti-Israeli voters to win seats: is that the Britain we love? Or even recognise?

Look a little deeper, and you find a Government that has lost itself to its own activists and their appetite for Israelophobic propaganda. Last week, Miliband rolled the pitch for sanctions by releasing a video filled with lurid allegations against Israel and its ‘horrific’ actions in Gaza.

In this emotive little clip, the Foreign Secretary detailed what he called ‘stories’ he heard from people working there.

‘Frankly, it was horrific, what is unfolding,’ declared Miliband. ‘You know, the stories that people were telling me of medicines being blocked, children dying while waiting for vital life-saving treatment.’

He offered nothing to support these claims. No agency data, no named source, no details of what drugs were held back and when. Israel’s foreign ministry replied that there were no restrictions whatsoever on medicines entering Gaza, and suggested he might take an interest in facts rather than ‘stories’.

Assertions of this sort, made by a private citizen, are gossip. Made by a Foreign Secretary, with the machinery of the British state standing behind him, they become propaganda and, if they cannot be stood up, untruths.

Britain has diplomats, defence attachés, an aid department and one of the finest intelligence services in the world. If the claim is true, the evidence must exist. Foreign Secretary: let us see it.

If, on the other hand, the evidence does not exist, or Miliband fails to produce it, he should withdraw the video with this extremely serious allegation – and apologise.

The US ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee – no friend of violent Israeli settlers, whom he has called ‘terrorists’ – responded to Miliband’s video with a post on X: ‘The Brits have lost it. The Jew hate of their government knows no boundaries and knows no facts.’

With good reason. Ever since October 7, the sorts of allegations contained in the Foreign Secretary’s ‘stories’ have gained massive attention, exacerbating attacks on British Jews, before falling apart on scrutiny.

Remember the supposedly ‘Israeli’ strike on the Al-Ahli hospital in Gaza, which turned out to be more likely a dodgy munition fired by Islamic Jihad which had fallen short?

Remember those distressing pictures of ‘starving’ baby Mohammed Zakaria al-Mutawaq, who turned out also to have cerebral palsy and a genetic disorder? They were even published on the front page of the New York Times.

Propaganda works, and it is vital that the Government doesn’t fall for it. Fast-forward to today, however, and Gaza overshadows all other concerns on the Left, including immigration. The keffiyeh has been culturally appropriated as a cloak of righteousness. But the time for such luxuries is gone.

Given the state of Britain’s public finances and defence, damaging our relations with Israel, with its booming economy, cutting-edge tech and world-beating security and intelligence services, is woefully irresponsible.

Bilateral trade stood at £5.9billion last year, with Britain selling Israel £3.5billion of goods and services and buying £2.4billion in return. Twenty-two Israeli-linked companies are listed in London, with a combined market capitalisation of £8.5billion. That’s a fair bit of profit – not to mention a fair few jobs – that our people stand to lose. For what?

At least one in eight packs of medication in Britain is produced by the Israeli pharma company Teva, which employs 1,500 people on our shores. The capsule camera used by the NHS to spare thousands of patients a colonoscopy was invented by an Israeli missile engineer.

Our new Challenger 3 tanks will come equipped with Israeli automatic defence system. And Mossad has quietly saved countless British lives with its tip-offs over the decades, a service for which an MI5 director-general once said the Israelis deserved ‘an Oscar’.

As Tom Tugendhat MP, the new Shadow Foreign Secretary, pointed out this week: ‘I can tell you, as security minister, a lot of incidents did not happen because of co-operation with intelligence sources in Israel, who helped us to protect British people from terror attacks.’

However loud the tantrums of Labour backbenchers and Islamist ideologues, it is simply not good enough for the Government to trash our national interest based on seemingly unverified claims and the electoral threat from the Greens.