Tom Tugendhat is a Conservative member of Parliament and former Security Minister of Britain. In the past month, two countries have promised to recognize Palestine as a state when the U.N. General Assembly meets in September. France simply declared its position. Britain, however, made recognition contingent on Israeli behavior, a conditional approach that reveals the fundamental incoherence of Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s foreign policy — and raises more troubling questions about his relationship with international law than it does about the Middle East’s future.
In saying that Israel could avoid British recognition of Palestine by securing a peace deal, Starmer is not only giving Hamas inordinate leverage, he is transforming recognition from a statement of legal fact into a disciplinary tool. This is politics masquerading as law.
Palestinians either have an inalienable right to statehood or they don’t. The legal conditions are set out clearly in the Montevideo Convention on the Rights and Duties of States of 1933. Four criteria are necessary: a permanent population, defined territory, a government and the capacity to enter into relations with other states. Recognition acknowledges these facts. It doesn’t create them based on third-party behavior.
Breaking from this precedent, Starmer’s government now argues Palestinians’ rights depend entirely on another state, Israel, and on an outcome that cannot be achieved without the acquiescence of a ruthless terrorist group, Hamas.
This logic would be absurd if applied elsewhere. Could Westminster decide that France or Ireland was no longer a state if Paris or Dublin misbehaved? Or if the actions of Germany or Italy were deemed unacceptable? Of course not. Even after the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan, there was no question about the country’s statehood. The change in regime didn’t invalidate the existence of the state.
Starmer’s proposition is particularly jarring given his legal background. International law has always been clear that statehood is recognized, not granted. As a former head of the Crown Prosecution Service and a human rights litigator, he should understand that Israeli military decisions, Hamas hostage policies and the whims of British parliamentarians are legally irrelevant to the question of Palestinian statehood.
This is all politics, and the calculations are transparent. France has its own domestic considerations in trying to pressure Israel. And one-third of Starmer’s cabinet and 130 or more Labour members of Parliament have demanded immediate action. Though Starmer’s decision may be politically expedient, it undermines a broader line of argument he has frequently wielded. His attempt to placate activist constituencies is undermining his claim that there are strict legal underpinnings to global governance—and that he is required to follow them
He has claimed legal necessity before. He suggested that after more than 200 years, international law forced Britain to hand over the vital air base at Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean to a state whose claim to it was, at best, tenuous. And at home, Brits were told that we have no choice but to accept the asylum claims of hundreds of thousands of people, many of whom arrived illegally, because conventions and treaties rank their rights above secure borders. The law makes demands we simply must follow.
But Starmer has now made clear there are no stone tablets, only crude political leverage dressed up as legal principle. When he next invokes legal necessity to justify unpopular decisions against British interests, opponents will be right to question whether he is once again engaging in crude politics with the law as cover.
The concrete knock-on effects will overwhelmingly be negative. Israel sees us as rewarding terrorism. Washington wonders what other international legal precedents could be politicized against American allies. Moscow and Beijing welcome another wedge in the Western alliance and a weakening of the claim to a higher moral order. Even Arab allies, long invested in negotiated two-state solutions, are behind closed doors complaining about how Westminster’s eagerness is letting Hamas off the hook.
But beyond realpolitik, Starmer has laid bare the emptiness of his appeals to legal authority. When legal principles are subordinated openly to political expediency, it corrodes not just international credibility, but also domestic trust. By mixing law with politics, Starmer has delivered only politics—and revealed a worrying absence of principle at the heart of his government.