Labour has been accused of endangering British Jews after Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband announced trade sanctions on Israeli West Bank settlements, a move Britain's Chief Rabbi Sir Ephraim Mirvis called "truly a dark day for British Jews" that would "embolden" antisemitism. Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch said Andy Burnham and the Prime Minister were "fanning the flames of anti-Semitism at home" to win back voters defecting to the Greens, while Israel branded the claims underpinning the sanctions "outrageous lies" and responded by closing its Jerusalem consulate to Britain and banning a dozen MPs.

Miliband, coordinating the move with France and Canada, accused Israel's government of enabling "ethnic cleansing" by "terrorist" settlers and cited growing evidence of "war crimes" in Gaza, saying Britain would not stand by while settlement expansion undermined a two-state solution. Jewish Labour MP Peter Prinsley warned Miliband directly that the policy risked being conflated with hostility towards British Jews generally, and the US ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, predicted American reprisals, including possible trade bans from states like Florida. Diplomats and officials, including National Security Adviser Jonathan Powell and former trade minister Sir Chris Bryant, had reportedly warned the sanctions—covering trade worth about £40 million a year—would be impractical and damaging to alliances, with Badenoch dismissing them as "performative" and linked to Labour's internal politics ahead of its conference and a looming by-election.