Ed Miliband’s Israeli settlement sanctions were announced with maximum theatricality.
Government backbenchers thronged their benches and leapt up, hundreds of them, almost as one, with a massed ‘clomp’ of shoe leather on Commons carpet, hoping to catch the Deputy Speaker’s eye.
When parliamentary benches are so full, the weight of bodies creates political force. Labour MPs were hot for this announcement.
They reckoned it might help them hang on to their seats. Might it even blunt the threat from the Greens and Gaza independents in next month’s Holborn by-election?
Numerous ministers were on parade: Yvette Cooper, Wes Streeting, Louise Haigh and more. Andy Burnham arrived late. He loitered by the Speaker’s chair for a while, hopping from foot to foot.
Our new PM has little natural presence. He squeezed in next to Mr Miliband apologetically and soon became near-invisible. All eyes were on Miliband.
The Foreign Secretary gave it everything. Ministerial statements, particularly on matters this delicate, are normally pretty dispassionate. Ed Mil’ treated the event like a party-conference speech.
He injected personal references. He flashed his eyes and stirred his limbs and generally gave it the full noodle. His head tossed and flicked as he accelerated to the climax of his remarks. The last couple of minutes were not far short of bizarre. Words gushed forth in a torrent. His mouth was yanked into various angles as he accentuated and emoted.
Ed Miliband began by saying he was ‘a proud British Jew’ and described childhood memories of visiting his grandmother in Tel Aviv
By the end, Andy Burnham was just a spectator. Cake decoration. The forgotten passenger on the bus next to Rosa Parks.
Mr Miliband began by saying he was ‘a proud British Jew’ and described childhood memories of visiting his grandmother in Tel Aviv.
Some of the happiest days of his youth had been spent picking oranges on the kibbutz where his cousins lived. And yet recent actions in the illegal settlements – he used the term ‘ethnic cleansing’ – had left him with a sense of shame. Hence the decision to take ‘a new approach’ to British foreign policy on Israel.
When he was being affectionate about Israel his tempo slowed and he went whispery. The more accusatory passages were delivered at greater velocity with more animation. When he sat down after that fervid finish the Labour benches erupted in joy.
The statement had lasted 21 minutes, which was more than twice the customary length for such things.
Beforehand Mr Miliband became agitated as he tried to secure agreement from Deputy Speaker Nusrat Ghani that he could take up so much time. His two eyeballs bored in on the top of his nose. During the speech his fingers trembled. He was tremendously wound up about this statement. Tom Tugendhat, the new Shadow Foreign Secretary, identified a few elegant differences of opinion. He suggested there was an element of ‘performative politics’ to all this and wondered what would happen if Palestine’s embassy were staffed by Hamas terrorists.
The people most likely to suffer from Mr Miliband’s sanctions, he feared, would be ‘innocent Palestinians and Israelis’.
Remarkably few Conservatives were present and only a couple of those – Sir Oliver Dowden (Hertsmere) and Jack Rankin (Windsor) – attacked Mr Miliband’s statement with much verve. After pro-Argentina noises in Jerusalem in recent days, Israel’s traditional Tory friends may have decided to sit this one out.
On the Labour side Damien Egan (Bristol NE) and Preet Gill (Edgbaston) expressed doubts about the policy change. Otherwise it was pretty much one-way traffic: pro-Palestine, pro-Miliband.
‘This is about our psychology as a country,’ claimed Mr Miliband, leaning on the despatch box and resting his rectangular head on one palm.
But then Tulip Siddiq (Lab, Hampstead & Highgate) mentioned her late constituent, Mr Miliband’s mother.
‘She would have been proud of him,’ said Ms Siddiq. And it struck me that maybe this was not so much about the psychology of our country as the psychology of an emotional son, brother and failed former Labour leader now set on rectifying things, if not on the West Bank then in his own, complicated constitution.