'In me, you always have a friend': Inside the Labour Friends of Israel reception

It was the last night of the Labour Party Conference in Liverpool, and the Labour Friends of Israel (LFI) reception was about to begin.

Just hours before, several journalists who had been asking Labour politicians about Gaza discovered that they had been stripped of their access.

Owen Jones from The Guardian and Novara Media's Rivkah Brown suspiciously received emails at the same time on Tuesday afternoon, informing them that their conference passes had been revoked. 

The decision was widely condemned, including by former Tory minister/now-Spectator editor Michael Gove.

But in a strange twist, just before the LFI reception, I was unexpectedly granted access to the main conference zone for the first time.

This was despite being excluded for most of the four-day event on the grounds that my credentials were still undergoing security checks.

My pass was finally handed to me in the Conference Services tent at 7pm. I then headed into the eerily quiet conference secure zone.

Most people had left for the various after-parties or gone back to their hotel rooms. Most of the action was over.

But one room was bustling: the one that was to host the reception for the LFI.

Reeves keeps her declarations personal

The night before had seen the reception for the Labour Friends of Palestine & the Middle East, at which Deputy Prime Minister David Lammy had been the main speaker.

Lammy was highly critical of Israel and said that the war must end immediately. Even so, he was still heckled by pro-Palestine protesters.

No chance of that at the LFI.

Here, the keynote speaker was Chancellor Rachel Reeves. It was a significant drop in headcount from last year, when five cabinet members, including then-Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner, attended.

That headcount declined still further when Middle East Minister Hamish Falconer showed up at the start but then left before the speeches began.

Reeves adopted a relentlessly solemn, often agonised, tone throughout, and fastidiously avoided any mention of Gaza.

There have been several serious diplomatic spats of late between the UK and Israel, most recently London's recognition of Palestinian statehood last month.

A downbeat Reeves told the standing crowd: "I know as well in the last couple of years, in the last 15 months, you haven't always been pleased with the decisions of this government.

"I understand. I feel your pain. But know in me, you always have a friend."

Reeves spoke of the Hamas-led attack on Israel on 7 October 2023, "the biggest loss on a single day of Jewish people since the Holocaust" and denounced "what is happening in the Middle East and the aggression of Iran and others in the Middle East".

Did those "others" include Israel? The chancellor kept it vague.

Instead, she promised that "as long as I am in the cabinet, as long as I am Chancellor of the Exchequer, I will always stand up for the Jewish community, stand up for Israel."

Reeves predicted confidently that "I'll be here with you next year and the year after and the year after that and the year after that" before pledging: "I'll always be a friend of Israel. I'll always be a friend of everybody in this room."

Reeves kept her declarations personal. She wasn't speaking for the government. For that, she received an enthusiastic round of applause and rejoined the crowd.

Pressure and poker faces

Next up was the International Development Minister, Baroness Chapman. "I normally go to bed much earlier than this," she revealed to scattered laughter. The speeches had begun at 9pm.

Chapman told the audience that she had "had my first ever visit to Israel earlier this year, and what an amazing country I found," before adding that "there will be no lasting ceasefire and no peace until those hostages are returned".

"Yes," Reeves said from the crowd.

It was then the turn of Daniela Grudsky, the deputy Israeli ambassador to Britain, to take to the stage to denounce the British government for "rewarding terrorism".

The chancellor, conveniently, had now left.

Grudsky started by thanking Jon Pearce, the former LFI chair, who stepped down weeks ago to become Keir Starmer's parliamentary private secretary.

Pearce who, unlike Reeves, had stayed, smiled modestly from the crowd. Earlier this year, he publicly opposed Britain recognising Palestine unilaterally.

"I must be honest in this room," said Grudksy. "We strongly disagree with the UK's government's position to recognise a Palestinian state. It is not a path to peace but to more violence.

"Rather than rewarding terrorism, the world must step up its pressure on Hamas to meaningfully accept and abide by the peace deal."

Many in the crowd seemed uneasy at such a strong denunciation of the Labour government. Others nodded their approval.

Pearce kept an impressive poker face.

Little criticism, even less praise

The previous day, the conference passed a motion, recognising that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza and demanding the imposition of sanctions.

Grudsky told the room that Israel was deeply disappointed by the decision. But her fighting spirit was distinctly out of sync with the general mood at the conference.

In a clear sign of how the mood within the government and the Labour party has shifted, LFI posters dotted around the room demanded "humanitarian aid into Gaza" and "ceasefire now".

Criticism of the Israeli government was minimal and implied during speeches, but praise for it was scarce. Rather, the hope expressed was for an end to the war.

The biggest applause at the LFI reception earlier was reserved for Shaun Lemel, a survivor of the Hamas attack on the Nova music festival, who described his trauma and grief.

"What I went through that morning will never leave me," he said. "I saw cars burning and I smelled the people inside.

"I saw people running through fields, searching for somewhere to hide. I saw people falling to their death."

Reeves hugged Lemmel after his speech.

Balancing acts and downward spirals

Gaza was the hot-button issue throughout the party conference, with numerous related fringe events. Falconer spoke at many of these.

On Monday, he attended an event hosted by the International Centre of Justice for Palestinians (ICJP) and the Labour Muslim Network (LMN).

"There's a picture of the [Palestinian] ambassador and I at the Palestinian mission last week looking up as the flag goes up," he told the room. "And you can see in our faces a sense of joy, a sense of the historic moment."

Falconer added that "any celebration about the historic decision that we have taken must of course also be leavened by the horrific scenes" in Gaza.

But earlier in the conference, he had spoken against the ultimately successful motion to recognise a genocide in Gaza, arguing that it threatened the peace process.

Britain still cooperates militarily with Israel, most significantly through sharing intelligence from surveillance flights over Gaza.

Many conference attendees MEE spoke to felt that the Labour government is attempting some kind of balancing act in its policy towards Israel.

Others countered that this was rubbish, and that the government's approach is incoherent and weak. 

One Labour member told MEE at the LFI reception that Israel was committing a "clear war crime" in Gaza.

Another said he worried recognising a Palestinian state would "antagonise the Israelis into doing something even more extreme".

But what was even clearer by the end of the LFI event, hosted by one of the country's most important pro-Israel lobby groups, is that Britain's relationship with Israel is on a definite downward spiral.

And that it is unlikely to be reversed any time soon.