The final two candidates vying to replace Rishi Sunak as leader of the Conservative Party both attacked the Labour Party’s stance towards Israel since being elected to government.
At a hustings event organised by Conservative Friends of Israel (CFI), former business and trade secretary Kemi Badenoch and former home office minister Robert Jenrick faced questions separately in an event chaired by CFI Honorary President Lord Polak CBE.
Jenrick stated that the government “is not a friend of Israel” and that policies including restoring funding to Unrwa and suspending some arms export licences “hurt our relationship with Israel”.
Badenoch said that Labour “will always bow to the mob”. She continued: “You look at the decision that they made not just on arms licences. You look at the decision that they made with the Unrwa. You look at the decision they made with the ICC. This is a very ideological Labour government. This is not Tony Blair's Labour government. This is Old Labour with remnants of Corbynism that are very, very bad for this country”.
She claimed the government’s decision to suspend some arms exports to Israel was a “gimmick”. “I saw that legal advice”, she said, “and I knew that it did not meet the threshold for the action that they took”. Jenrick concurred and said the arms embargo was put in place for a “purely synthetic, superficial reason”.
Questioned about pro-Palestine protests in central London and the concerns some Jews have for their safety, the former Home Office minister said: “A Britain without its Jewish community is not Britain, and so it is incumbent on all of us, whatever our faith, to defend the British Jewish community and to ensure that each and every member of feels safe on our streets”.
Tory leadership candidate Robert Jenrick with CFI Honorary President Lord Polak CBE at Conservative Friends of Israel’s Conservative Party Leadership election Hustings event in Central London, Great Britain 14th October 2024. Credit: CFI. Hosted by Lord Stuart Polak The Rt Hon Robert Jenrick MP Photograph by Elliott FranksElliott Franks
He went on: “For my part, I have tried to urge the police consistently to take action… I urged the Metropolitan [Police] Commissioner to take action when the police failed to arrest somebody, to arrest someone who shouted jihad in Oxford Street, when genocidal chants were broadcast onto Big Ben. I was criticised earlier in the summer for saying that if you shout in an intimidatory manner in our streets, the law should be enforced. We need to ensure the police are enforcing our existing laws without fear or favour”.
In August, Jenrick was criticised for saying that protesters could be arrested for chanting “Allahu Akbar” (God is great in Arabic) in an intimidating manner.
Badenoch said that Hamas’s atrocities on October 7 were “a stain on the world”. She emphasised: “It is not just Israel's fight. It is the world's fight. It is a fight of good versus evil. It is not just politics”.
She continued: “I see in Israel a moral clarity that is lacking in many other parts of the world. I see a moral courage that many of us should emulate. I look at the achievements of so many brilliant Jewish people in many countries around the world, and they are an inspiration to people in other parts of the world. However much the media and certain wings of the commentariat want to disagree. I think Israel is special, and that is why I have always been a supporter of Israel for at least 20 years, right back from my 20s”.
Jenrick, who told the audience of his involvement in the proscription of the Hamas and Hezbollah terror groups while in government, said that “the next battle is obviously the IRGC (Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps … “We should proscribe the IRGC, and… say very clearly that terrorists are terrorists”.
On Wednesday, Politico reported that the government was set to ignore calls to proscribe the IRGC, despite calling for the group’s proscription while in opposition.
At the Conservative Party’s annual conference in September, Jenrick said it was “a mark of shame” that his party hadn’t proscribed the IRGC while in government.
