Britain’s moral compass has been pawned for a trade deal. Keir Starmer knows it, but he’d rather you didn’t notice. Israel is a lucrative partner – cybersecurity, defence tech, pharmaceuticals, AI – and a post-Brexit Britain has boxed itself in. The EU is gone, America is erratic, China is untouchable, and the Commonwealth is a postcard. What’s left are “strategic partners” like Israel, where commerce can masquerade as foreign policy. And so, post-Brexit, Starmer really has no choice. He’s governing a diminished nation that depends on transactional friendships to look globally relevant. He’s managing decline with a handshake.
So when Bezalel Smotrich talks of “erasing” Palestinian villages and Itamar Ben Gvir – a man once convicted of incitement to racism – parades as Israel’s security tsar, Downing Street looks away. Trade first, truth later – the moral cost already priced in.
The same logic played out on a smaller stage. West Midlands Police, working from clear intelligence, classed Aston Villa v Maccabi Tel Aviv as high-risk – Amsterdam’s riots last year still fresh, a Tel Aviv derby abandoned after flares and fighting. They acted prudently to prevent a repeat. Maccabi’s management reached for the oldest shield in politics: cry antisemitism. A public-safety call became “discrimination.” Ministers lined up to perform indignation while Aston Villa quietly told stewards they could skip the shift if they felt unsafe. The people mitigating risk were smeared; the provocateurs claimed victimhood. The micro mirrored the macro – moral clarity buried under politics.
Critics point out that other European clubs have far worse records of violence yet their fans travel freely. True – but their governments aren’t led by men like Smotrich and Ben Gvir, whose poison seeps into every aspect of Israeli life. Their rhetoric of supremacy and vengeance spills over borders, carried by satellite and social media, turning football fixtures into flashpoints. It’s not just the threat from Maccabi’s own ultras – it’s the reaction they provoke. Each chant, each flag, each away trip becomes a lightning rod for the fury those ministers – and Netanyahu, who indulges them – have stoked abroad. The provocation starts in Jerusalem and explodes on other people’s streets.
And over it all, Starmer repeats his anaesthetic line: “Israel has a right to defend itself, but must act within international law.” It sounds balanced until you realise it says nothing. We freeze Russian assets for war crimes, yet fly to Tel Aviv for trade memoranda. We preach a rules-based order while selling components to a government whose own ministers sneer at those rules. That isn’t diplomacy; it’s moral outsourcing disguised as pragmatism.
The Maccabi affair exposes the rot. It isn’t antisemitism. It isn’t anti-Israel. It’s anti-violence – a police force doing what the Foreign Office won’t: confront reality without political permission. And for that, they’re chastised. In Britain 2025, morality is measured in export potential, and “post-Brexit realism” has become a euphemism for surrender.
Starmer’s silence isn’t statesmanship. It’s the dull hum of a man trapped by history, buying credibility one contract at a time. Smotrich sneers, Ben Gvir preens, Netanyahu nods along, and Britain politely pretends not to notice – provided the paperwork clears. When trade becomes the excuse for everything, morality becomes the price of entry.
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