Labour's left predicted to push Andy Burnham toward ‘extreme’ anti-Israel stance

Journalist and author Melanie Phillips warns if Labour MP Andy Burnham becomes the UK’s next prime minister, his opposition to Israel will grow more extreme. “Andy Burnham’s position on the Middle East has been pretty centralist, I would say, in terms of the Labour Party anyway, in that he has not come out in support in the past for boycotting Israel, recognising Palestine,” Ms Phillips said. “We don’t know how he’s going to behave in terms of the Middle East; this is not uppermost in his priorities quite clearly at the moment. “Because he is very much an opportunist politician who tacks to the prevailing winds, given that his party … is dominated by the harder left, I would say, it’s very likely that he will tack more to the left, therefore become more extreme in his opposition to Israel than even Keir Starmer was.”