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Thank you for subscribing to Zeteo UK. We are still in soft-launch mode till September as we finish recruiting our team, but given the craziness of the British news cycle right now, we will be publishing stories and op-eds on a semi-regular basis between now and then. We are publishing this piece without a paywall, but please do become a paid subscriber today so you can read and watch all of our Zeteo UK original content without ever hitting a paywall – and also so you can help fund independent journalism in Britain. - Mehdi Hasan
Dear Louise,
Do you remember when you spoke truth to power?
I do.
It was June 2025, in a foreign policy debate in the House of Commons. You were a backbencher who was willing to use a term that most of your Labour colleagues at the time – including, shamefully, many on your own front bench – were still too afraid to say out loud. “It is impossible to conclude that this is anything less than a genocide,” you declared. You even called for the Labour government of Sir Keir Starmer to impose immediate “sanctions” on Benjamin Netanyahu and his “genocidal regime”.
You were on the right side of history then. More than a year later, you now have an even bigger opportunity to still be on the right side of history.
More than 70,000 Palestinians have now been killed by Israel in Gaza – around 14,000 of them since you delivered your remarks in the Commons. Just a few weeks after your speech, Israeli forces bombed the Al-Baqa seaside café in Gaza City, killing more than 30 Palestinians, many of them women and children. Two months after your comments, Israel attacked the Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis with a double-tap strike, killing more than 20 Palestinians, including five journalists. And, since the so-called “ceasefire” in October 2025, an average of one Palestinian child has been killed by Israel in Gaza every single day, according to UNICEF.
More than a year since you spoke out, the G-word that you employed so provocatively and powerfully from the backbenches has now become the consensus of leading scholars and human rights groups around the world.
But, Louise, I have to ask: now that you are a cabinet minister – now that you sit at the table where executive decisions are actually made, as first secretary of state and chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, as “the most powerful woman in Britain” – what are you going to do about it?
Because there is something you need to know about the word you used in June 2025. Genocide is not merely a political or moral judgement. You cannot deploy it only as a rhetorical flourish. It is a legal term with legal consequences. Under Article I of the Genocide Convention – which the United Kingdom acceded to back in 1970 – “contracting parties” have a duty “to prevent and to punish” genocide. It’s not a suggestion. It’s not optional. It’s a “binding duty” per the UN, imposed on every state party, including the UK.
The International Court of Justice confirmed in its landmark Bosnia v. Serbia case that genocide imposes a positive obligation on state parties, a “duty to act”. And yet here is the depressing truth, Louise: your government is currently doing almost nothing to discharge that duty.
Prime Minister Andy Burnham has said Gaza is a “scar on our collective conscience”. Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband has condemned the “dire humanitarian situation”. One government source told my Zeteo UK colleague Shehab Khan that the Israeli government’s genocidal rhetoric is “abhorrent”. But the Genocide Convention requires more than official statements. Stern words cannot “prevent” and “punish” the perpetrators of an ongoing campaign of extermination.
And here’s the worst part: you actually know what the alternative looks like, Louise, because you called for it. When you were on the backbenches, unbound by collective responsibility and able to follow your conscience and speak truth to power, you rightly demanded immediate sanctions on both Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his “genocidal regime”. Now that you are in the cabinet, I am sure some will insist you hold your tongue. They will ask you to be responsible, be moderate, be measured. But how is it responsible to do nothing as a genocide unfolds, a genocide you yourself publicly recognised? How is it moderate to be one of the most senior members of a government that continues to sell arms to a “genocidal regime”? How is it measured to choose career over conscience?
You could choose a different path, however: a more principled and consistent way forward. You could be the minister who pushes to suspend arms sales to Israel, and points out to her colleagues the clear legal risk in continuing to send British weapons to Tel Aviv. You could be the minister who uses her seat at the cabinet table to press for the UK to use all of the levers at its disposal – sanctions, travel bans, asset freezes – to force Israel to end its genocidal campaign in Gaza.
You could be that minister, Louise. The alternative is to be the minister who, upon entering the cabinet as one of the most influential and senior figures in the Burnham government, decided that genocide was no longer a word you were willing to use.
To be clear: I write this not to berate or belittle you, but to hold you to a standard you set for yourself. The truth is that you were bold and outspoken when it was easy to be bold and outspoken – when it cost you nothing, when you were a largely powerless backbencher. So the question now is whether you will be bold and outspoken when it is hard, difficult, costly; when it means disagreeing with the political and media establishment in this country and perhaps even your own prime minister, too.
Because that, Louise, is what “preventing genocide” actually demands. Not words, or thoughts, or prayers.
Action.
The world is watching. History is watching. And the people of Gaza – at least, those who survive this genocide – will remember what you did with all of this new power you now wield.
Yours, in hope,
Mehdi
More from Zeteo UK:
Unfortunately…when the cabinet is stuffed full with ‘Labour Friends of Israel’ …there’s no room for a conscience.. 😔
Burnham is a genocide denier . That’s why.