By Steve Winston, Managing Director of the National Jewish Assembly
There are many ways a once-proud political party can show it has lost its nerve, its judgment, and its moral compass. Backing the unilateral recognition of a Palestinian state – at a time when Hamas is still holding hostages, and Israel is still burying its dead – is one of them.
This week, a group of Conservative MPs and peers – led by Kit Malthouse – decided that what Britain really needs right now is a dramatic diplomatic gesture in favour of a Palestinian Authority that hasn’t held an election since Coldplay were topping the charts, and whose most popular rival is a genocidal terrorist group. What a curious calculation. As if the road back to electoral relevance lies through Gaza City.
Unilateral recognition of a Palestinian state is not just bad foreign policy. It is a betrayal of Conservative values, an abandonment of moral clarity, and an insult to the Jewish community – at home and abroad. It rewards terrorism, penalises our democratic ally Israel, and emboldens those who chant for intifada on our streets.
To be clear: Palestine is not a functioning state. It lacks a single, unified leadership. Half its territory is controlled by Hamas, an Iranian proxy that openly declares its intent to repeat the atrocities of October 7 again and again. The other half is ruled by Mahmoud Abbas, a Holocaust revisionist now entering the 20th year of a four-year presidential term. Between them, they have fostered a political culture not of peace-building, but of pay-for-slay pensions, hate-filled schoolbooks, and diplomatic intransigence. Recognising such an entity now is not just premature – it is perverse.
Some Tories, desperate for a new identity after electoral decimation, seem to think they can buy virtue on the cheap by parroting the language of the campus left. But they should think again. Mainstream Conservative voters do not yearn for performative gestures to embolden Hamas. They don’t want their MPs validating the same talking points as Jeremy Corbyn and George Galloway. And they certainly don’t want their own government to give legitimacy to a state that does not yet exist, and under its current leadership, should not exist.
For years, Conservative governments have prided themselves on strong UK-Israel ties, on standing against extremism, on defending Jewish communities from the rising tide of antisemitism. Now, a cabal within the party seems intent on torching that record to virtue-signal to the very voters who will never, ever reward them.
And what of the message this sends to British Jews? We have just emerged from the worst spike in antisemitic hate crimes since records began. Jewish schoolchildren have been told to hide their uniforms. Jewish businesses have been boycotted. Rallies in our capital call for “global intifada,” and the police shrug. The streets have not felt safe.
And now, Conservative politicians – the supposed grown-ups in the room – have chosen this moment to side with the cause most aggressively associated with those chants, with those mobs, and with that intimidation. Jewish voters may rightly ask: where is your moral clarity now?
Kit Malthouse, the ringleader of this political suicide note, is not known for his subtlety, but even by his standards, this was a grotesque misjudgment. He and his fellow signatories have just told British Jews that their fears are negotiable, their safety secondary, and their loyalty unreciprocated.
There must be consequences. Jewish voters are not a monolith. But they are not fools either. Many have been loyal Conservative supporters for decades. They remember Thatcher’s moral clarity, Cameron’s leadership on antisemitism, and May’s tough stance on Iran. They expect better than this.
The government should make one thing very clear: the UK will not recognise a Palestinian state until it meets the basic conditions of statehood – control, governance, accountability, and peace. And above all, until it abandons terror.
The Tories must decide: are they a party of principle, or a party of pandering? If they choose the latter, they will lose not just Jewish voters – but their soul.
