Parliament may have shut up shop for a six-week summer break, but MPs and the French president are turning up the heat on Sir Keir Starmer over the Middle East.
More than one in three of all 650 MPs have written to the prime minister calling on the UK to recognise a Palestinian state at a United Nations conference next week.
In response to the call, his answer is essentially: Yes, but not yet.
That, of course, won’t satisfy the 222 MPs backing an all-party letter to the PM penned by the Labour MP Sarah Champion.
The majority of names on the letter, predictably, are Labour, Lib Dem and SNP MPs. But there are some Tory big hitters too, including Father of the House Sir Edward Leigh and former cabinet minister Kit Malthouse.
Until now, the PM and foreign secretary David Lammy have argued that the gesture of recognising Palestine on its own won’t end what Sir Keir himself calls “the appalling scenes in Gaza“.
But the pressure for recognition isn’t just coming from MPs. French President Emmanuel Macron has said France will recognise a Palestinian state at the UN General Assembly in September.
Read more: What does recognising a Palestinian state mean?
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Why is France recognising Palestine as a state?
Might Mr Macron – whose bromance with the PM during his state visit to the UK could not have been warmer – persuade Sir Keir to do the same? Possibly. He’s not ruling it out.
But there’s one big obstacle to Sir Keir bowing to the pressure from MPs and the French president. And that’s the towering figure who’s in Scotland this weekend: the golfing president of the United States.
When Donald Trump was asked about President Macron’s vow to recognise Palestine in September, his response was brutal and bordering on condescending.
“What he says doesn’t matter,” the president told reporters at the White House as he headed for Air Force One. “He’s a very good guy. I like him, but that statement doesn’t carry weight.”
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Trump: ‘It doesn’t matter what Macron says’
Ouch! But the US president’s unflinching support for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu places Sir Keir in an awkward spot: Caught between the opposing stances of the French and US presidents.
The PM is, therefore, also under pressure from President Trump, and he won’t want to fall out with him when he meets him this weekend. Hence, his carefully worded statement responding to the letter from the MPs.
Appearing to try and please the US and French presidents – and the large number of Labour MPs backing Sarah Champion’s letter – Sir Keir said he’s “working on a pathway to peace” in the Middle East.
He spoke of “concrete steps” to turn a ceasefire into a lasting peace and said recognition of a Palestinian state “has to be one of those steps”, adding: “I am unequivocal about that.”
And he concluded: “But it must be part of a wider plan which ultimately results in a two-state solution and lasting security for Palestinians and Israelis.
“This is the way to ensure it is a tool of maximum utility to improve the lives of those who are suffering – which of course, will always be our ultimate goal.”
Read more from Sky News:
Aid is sitting idle in Gaza – where there is now widespread malnutrition
Israel allows foreign countries to parachute aid into Gaza
‘Walking corpses’ in Gaza – with one in five children malnourished, says UN
As well as his own statement, the PM issued a joint statement with President Macron and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, both of whom have held talks with Sir Keir in the UK in the past fortnight.
That statement was tough, beginning: “The time has come to end the war in Gaza.”
It went on: “The humanitarian catastrophe that we are witnessing in Gaza must end now.”
Yet there’s little sign of either the war or the humanitarian catastrophe ending any time soon.
And that means that throughout parliament’s summer break, MPs will no doubt continue to turn up the heat on the PM.
