The New Dark Age

Thursday, 21 May 2026 — Declassified UK

Britain could have a new prime minister soon.

Keir Starmer saw off calls to resign following the heavy losses in the local elections, but his premiership remains far from secure.

On Tuesday, Andy Burnham was confirmed as the Labour Party candidate in the Makerfield by-election in June. It’s set to be a significant proxy leadership battle.

An anticipated return to Parliament for Burnham is expected to trigger a leadership challenge, and most polls are unambiguous about who would win.

The Greater Manchester mayor set out the battle lines as he pitched to Makerfield, and the wider country.

“A vote for me will be a vote to change Labour, because Labour needs to change if we are to regain people’s trust,” Burnham said this week.

Change is his watchword, but it’s not just a campaign message. Burnham is quietly revising some of his own long-held positions.

He has already ruled out rejoining the European Union, a position he held as recently as September. And last week, he committed to maintaining the government’s fiscal rules, having previously warned Britain was too reliant on bond markets.

But his repositioning ostensibly stops at foreign policy. And there, the questions have simply not been asked.

In 2015, less than a year after Israel’s assault on Gaza, Burnham was reportedly already a member of the Labour Friends of Israel and pledged that his first overseas visit as leader would be to Israel. The Balfour Declaration, he said at the time, represented “an example of British values in action”.

Likewise, he criticised boycotts and other pressure campaigns directed at Israel as “unjustified spitefulness”.

In late October 2023, only weeks into Israel’s assault on Gaza, he called for a ceasefire, breaking ranks with the leadership. In June 2025, he was among senior Labour figures demanding the party take the lead and immediately recognise a Palestinian state.

Yet whether that apparent divergence represents a genuine shift has gone largely unexamined.

What this means for British foreign policy matters. Would Burnham reverse course and recognise that Israel is committing genocide and support avenues of accountability?

Would he still support Labour Friends of Israel? If change is on the agenda, does it extend to UK military bases in the region, or a full arms embargo on Israel?

Speaking on Sky News on Tuesday about the party’s leadership battle, our co-director Laura Piddock said: “We’ve just watched a Labour Party be complicit in genocide.”

She argued that real change cannot mean continuity by another name. Her point was hastily brushed aside.

Change, it seems, has its limits.