House of Commons
London
SW1A 0AA

 

31 July 2026

 

Dear Prime Minister,

 

A new start for the UK or more of the same?

 

We write to you to express our deep concerns regarding the dissonance between your previous comments and your current office’s statements about a new direction for the UK, and the actions undertaken and policies implemented. We flag two areas, but sadly we fear more could be raised. In raising these issues, we demand that your office take immediate remedial actions to ensure that not only are you true to your promises, but that you engage with the criticisms and concerns raised by many actors in civil society. We are writing to you as the Founders of Convivencia UK, a coalition of Jewish, Muslim and Christian organisations supporting a just peace in Palestine based on One Democratic State, launched in London in May 2022. Our constitutive organisations are IHRC, Islamic Human Rights Commission, and JNP, Jewish Network for Palestine.

 

National unity

 

You have claimed, in your speech outside No 10, London, that Britain needs a new ‘national sense of unity, of common purpose and positivity’.  We couldn’t agree more.  Discord and hatred have divided our communities.  Yet you kept silent on naming the causes of such division.  Racisms – cultural, religious and communal, have permeated all facets of society. The findings of the Stephen Lawrence and the Mubarek Enquiries regarding institutional racism and Islamophobia are now over 25 years’ old.  Yet their basic tenets of concern have not only not been addressed, but have been actively campaigned against at the very highest level of political society and office. The levels of Islamophobia have never been higher, a fact silenced by mainstream media.

 

It is worth nothing that the pervasiveness of such racisms has emboldened other narratives of hatred, including of class, sexuality and gender, poisoning social interaction at almost every level of society.  None of these can be tackled without addressing the overarching damage done by racist narratives.  The processes that have undermined not only the culture of equalities and multiculturalism, are openly inciting mob violence against minoritized groups.  Indeed, you saw the literal effects of this whilst Mayor of Greater Manchester, in the mob violence in Stockport, two years ago.

 

We are especially terrified by the growth of Islamophobia. Together with one of our founder organisations, IHRC, an NGO that works on human rights, demanding an end to the racisms and other hatreds that deny all peoples the basic facets of human dignity, we demand that you immediately name racism, including anti-Muslim racism/Islamophobia as a crisis, and set about instituting enquiries, and revisiting all policies that have thus far been implemented on issues of anti-racism.  This will require, among other measures:

 

• reviews of national equalities bodies (such as are left) and policies;
• the recent imposition of flawed definitions regarding Islamophobia and antisemitism, despite strong critique from experts;
• a review of the shrinking of political space that has led to the exclusion from relevant conversations experts in these fields, and their replacement with sycophantic and biased figures;
• a review of hate crime recording and measures implemented to prevent and prosecute hate crimes; the failure of implementation of Leveson Enquiry recommendations with regard to media racism;
• the instigation of a wide-ranging review of institutional racism in the media, law enforcement, the judicial system, education and key institutions of state;
• urgent reviews of the erosion of key human rights protections, and the failures to develop more robust human rights frameworks.

 

We also demand that you begin the cultural work needed, leading by example, explicitly including marginalised peoples in your presentation of ‘national unity’.  No exceptions, no caveats.  Everyone in this country has been affected by decades of (as you rightly pointed out) neoliberalism.  To attempt the healing of generations of political damage, you must exonerate those who have been falsely blamed for societal ills. To begin the positive work for ‘postcode prosperity’ you must condemn postcode pogroms and their causes. Anything else is a surrender to the toxic agenda of Reform.

 

This is true also in Foreign Affairs, particularly, but not only Palestine, Iran and the capitulation of the UK to US and Israeli demands – a misguided and illegal policy which has led to a breach between the people of Britain and its ruling elite.

 

You named neoliberalism the cause of this Britain’s ills, promising your tenure will reverse those ills, disposing of neoliberalism as a guiding ideology.  You rightly identify its beginnings under the tenure of Margaret Thatcher.  No Prime Minister since has seen fit to depart from this toxic worldview.

 

However, without extracting Britain from the wars and violence of neoliberalism perpetrated by the US, your promises of change will remain unfulfilled.

 

Currently, you are continuing your predecessor’s policy of following US and Israeli war crimes.  You cannot claim that Britain is not complicit in war crimes, like Kier Starmer did.   This policy should be immediately reversed. Joining the US/Israel attacks on Iran is the highest crime according to the UN Charter. The only moral stance is the end of all UK involvement.

 

This ending of complicity in neoliberalism’s genocidal violence extends to all such wars and includes the genocide in Gaza and the rest of Palestine.  Distancing yourself from the illegalities of Sir Keir is welcome, but requires a change of policy, not only of rhetoric.

 

We need a root and branch change with regard to Palestine.  Britain caused the Palestine crisis with the 1917 Balfour Declaration and by supporting Zionism ever since. We demand an end to this imperialist stand and thefull support of Palestinian rights, in Palestine.

 

Because of Britain aping the US, we in the UK have faced:

 

• decades of misguided anti-terrorism legislation enacted and implemented in highly discriminatory and racist manner;
• a Stasi-like surveillance state, with political dissent criminalised, with children as young as four brought under the purview of state security through the PREVENT program;
• the proscription of legitimate resistance to brutal colonial crimes worldwide;
• the proscription civil disobedience protest groups in the UK, supporting Palestine;
• the prosecution of peaceful Palestine supporters and legitimate protest against climate change;
• the criminalisation of speech and thought on Iran and Russia via the National Security Act.

 

These are just some of the effects.

 

Properly addressing these issues  requires your considerable attention but some are simple to resolve.  Revoke the proscription of Palestine Action.  Set in motion enquiries into the arrests and prosecutions of anti-genocide protesters.  Repeal the National Security Act and initiate reviews/processes required to reverse the dysfunctional and dystopian anti-terror regime that has fuelled the narratives of division and hatred related above.

 

There is no place for intelligence sharing with genocidal regimes like Israel, or offering services to states starting a war of aggression like the US and Israel did in the case of Iran. The use of UK bases makes us implicit in war crimes. This should end!

 

Also required is a review of the foreign influence by Israel and the US on the policies of the UK government. This has led to support not just of genocide and wars of aggression, but to the adoption of an Islamophobic agenda and actions. The acceptance of US and Israel plans to expel all Palestinians from Gaza, and later from the West Bank cannot be the accepted policy of the UK. We must be a leading force towards the ending of Zionist aggression in the Middle East and the building of a single democracy in Palestine for all its citizens, including the refugees of 1948 and 1967, as decreed by the UN. In our view, only such a state will offer peace, justice and equality for all, like it did in South Africa after Apartheid was defeated.

 

 

*******

 

As someone who has claimed he is committed to changing the fortunes of this beleaguered nation, we expect you to confirm explicitly what this entails, and to enact it accordingly.

 

If you do not, this new ‘national unity’ will become a boon for far-right politics, a politics that has become normalised in state policy for decades.

 

You have a chance to be remembered as the person who defied the new fascism, in all its facets.  We hope and pray that you take this chance. We all fear what will happen if you do not.

 

Yours sincerely,

 

 

Massoud Shadjareh

Chair, Islamic Human Rights Commission

 

Prof. Haim Bresheeth-Žabner

Co-founder of Jewish Network for Palestine

 

Abbas Edalat

Hands Off Iran Coalition

 

Richard Haley,

Spokesperson for Scotland Against Criminalising Communities (SACC)

 

Revd Dr Stephen Sizer