As fate would have it, the recent Labour conference in Liverpool opened the day after Hamas started its deadly incursion into southern Israel to seize hostages and commit barbaric acts of terror. Sir Keir Starmer led his party in unequivocal denunciations of the atrocities, combined with unambiguous expressions of support for Israel as it reeled in horror at the single biggest act of antisemitic mass-murder on its soil since the Jewish state came into existence. The following day, Angela Rayner led the conference in a minute’s silence in remembrance of the victims.
The leadership team worried that there might be some dissent from the floor and put in place plans to deal with it. Anyone disrupting the minute’s silence was to be frogmarched out of the hall and taken to a shredder. Their conference pass would be destroyed and then they would be expelled from the site. The shredder was never switched on, because there was not a single murmur of dissent in the packed conference hall. Labour people stood as one in empathy and solidarity with Israel.
