Burnham’s Trump call reported no US pushback, Axios reports
The United Kingdom’s foreign secretary, Ed Miliband, defended the government’s decision to ban trade with Israeli settlements in the West Bank in a Commons statement on Tuesday, drawing condemnation from Britain’s chief rabbi and leading Jewish organizations.
Sir Ephraim Mirvis, the chief rabbi, described the announcement as “truly a dark day for British Jews,” the Guardian reported. Several of the country’s leading Jewish organizations also condemned the decision. According to the Guardian, the UK’s rightwing papers led Wednesday’s coverage with the chief rabbi’s remarks, and the Daily Mail splashed its front page on the story. The Guardian said its overnight report on the Commons statement, by Pippa Crerar, Jessica Elgot and Kiran Stacey, described it as potentially “one of the most important Commons statements of the year.”
In Wednesday morning broadcast interviews, Miliband rejected the criticism. Speaking to Sky News, Miliband described himself as “a proud British Jew” and said he disagreed with the chief rabbi while affirming respect for his office.
“Well, I’m a proud British Jew, and I don’t agree with the chief rabbi,” Miliband told Sky News. “I have great respect for the chief rabbi, but I don’t agree with him, and I believe that it must be possible to do what we did yesterday, which is to stand up for British values of the rule of law, of dignity for people, of the prevention of injustice, and do so in a way, as I did yesterday, to say to anyone in our country who holds British Jews responsible for the actions of the Israeli government, that is antisemitism, pure and simple.”
British ministers had been concerned about a possible backlash from US President Donald Trump, but no such backlash had materialized publicly as of Wednesday morning, the Guardian reported. According to Axios reporter Barak Ravid, citing two sources with knowledge of a Monday call between Andy Burnham and Trump, “Trump didn’t push back or ask Burnham to change course.”
The same Axios dispatch reported that US officials had told their British counterparts they “shared their concerns about the Netanyahu government’s West Bank policy, even if they disagreed with these specific sanctions,” citing unnamed sources.
The Guardian’s editorial on Wednesday opened: “Rarely in recent years has the Commons felt like the cockpit of history. On Tuesday it did.” Patrick Wintour, the Guardian’s diplomatic editor, also published a separate analysis of the statement.
Burnham was due to face Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch at prime minister’s questions on Wednesday at noon, with the sanctions expected to feature. The day’s Commons agenda also included a possible statement from Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander on recent air traffic control disruptions, followed by the second reading debate on the civil aviation bill.
Other Wednesday events included Green party leader Zack Polanski speaking at the Wild Summit in Bristol from 9 a.m.; former and current independent reviewers of terror legislation David Anderson and Jonathan Hall giving evidence to phase two of the Southport inquiry on Prevent’s role in managing violence-fixated individuals; and Prof Alexis Jay, chair of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse, giving evidence to the London Assembly’s police and crime committee on grooming gangs.