UK politics live: Burnham risks row with Trump and Netanyahu over new crackdown on Israel

Work and pensions secretary Pat McFadden has rejected the accusation of “Jew hate” from US ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee.

He told Sky News: “I fundamentally reject that. When it comes to the Jewish community in the UK, this is a really important part of our society.

“I want Jewish people in the UK to be able to live their lives freely in education, in work, in worship, in all aspects of their lives, and I and every Government minister would condemn any attacks on the Jewish community here in the UK.”

Israel has already threatened to retaliate if the UK imposes sanctions over the potential expansion of settlements in the West Bank, with foreign minister Gideon Saar warning: “If Britain acts against Israel, Israel will act against Britain.”

Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel’s hard-line public security minister, called on the country’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu to publicly recognise the Falkland Islands as “Argentine territory under occupation, which the British violently steal from the Argentine people”.

He wrote on X: “The British are not content with merely occupying the territory; they also carry out oil drilling there and steal the money from the Argentine people.

“I call upon Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to recognize Argentina’s sovereignty over the Malvinas Islands and to impose sanctions on Great Britain as long as the occupation continues.”

A government minister has insisted today’s sanctions on illegal Israeli settlements will not amount to a boycott of all Israeli goods.

Work and pensions minister Pat McFadden was questioned on how to government will be able to differentiate between goods from Israeli settlements and others from Israel itself.

Asked if the policy could result in a “boycott of Israeli products by the backdoor”, he told Sky News: “We don’t want to do that. The foreign secretary will set out the details of how this will operate when he stands up in Parliament this afternoon.

“But I think it’s also important to say that Israel is an important trading partner for the UK.

“This isn’t intended to be a boycott of all Israeli goods.”

Shadow home secretary Chris Philp said the Government’s announcement on sanctions on Israeli settlements in the West Bank was “performative posturing”.

The Conservative MP told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “We think it’s performative posturing.

“It’s very difficult to distinguish goods that come from the West Bank area versus the rest of Israel. So practically, it’s very difficult to implement.

“It also risks damaging an important security relationship because we do rely, the UK relies, on Israel for vital information and intelligence about terrorist threats.

“But I would also like to say, that said, we do oppose the building of settlements on land which is Palestinian, whether that’s sponsored by the Israeli state or simply allowed to happen, because we do think a two-state solution is the right solution, and building settlements on Palestinian land is obviously wrong.

“But this performative sanctions is not the right thing to do.”

It is understood that foreign secretary Ed Miliband will make the announcement in the Commons on Tuesday as part of a reset of Britain’s relations with Israel.

The decision comes in response to controversial plans in the occupied West Bank, in which Israel issued tenders for 1,200 homes as part of the E1 settlement project.

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Ed Miliband is set to announce sanctions on illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank, including a trade ban.

The foreign secretary will first unveil the plans to Cabinet at the government’s weekly Downing Street meeting at 9:30am this morning.

He will then lay out the plans to parliament in a ministerial statement this afternoon.

The prime minister discussed the intervention with US president Donald Trump on Monday, in a move which risks drawing criticism from Washington.

Residents in Portsmouth have had a “difficult 24 hours” amid the anti-migrant demonstrations, the MP for Portsmouth South has said.

Stephen Morgan said constituents were concerned both about the “thuggish behaviour” from protestors as well as the wider issue of small boat crossings.

“People are obviously very upset by what happened yesterday,” he told ITV. “I’ve been on the ground talking to local people, to businesses, to the police about what we’ve seen.

“Democratic engagement is vital in our country and so are protests but they need to be fair. They cannot overstep the mark and that’s what we’ve seen down in Portsmouth.

Asked how surprised he was by initial reports, he said: “It’s obviously surprising what happened overnight and the government is working extremely hard to smash the gangs and reduce the number of small boats coming into the UK.

“I understand people’s frustrations and anger about small boats coming into this country.”

The number of migrants who have reached the UK after crossing the English Channel so far this year is more than 40 per cent lower than at this point in 2025.

Last month, The Independent took a look at the latest available data for crossings and the long-term trends.

Some 14,526 migrants have arrived in the UK by crossing the Channel in small boats this year as of August 1, according to provisional figures from the Home Office.

This is 43 per cent below the number of arrivals at this stage last year, which was 25,436.

It is also 14 per cent below the number at this point in 2024, which was 16,903.

Looking further back, this year’s total is only slightly below the number of migrants who had arrived by this stage in 2023, which was 14,732.

The record for the largest number of migrants to arrive in the UK in a calendar year is 45,774, which was set in 2022.

This year’s current total of 14,526 is 15 per cent below the figure at this point in 2022.

Overall, 207,159 migrants have arrived in the UK after crossing the Channel since data began on January 1 2018.

Of these, 127,919 (62 per cent) arrived under Conservative governments and 79,240 (38 per cent) came under the current Labour government, including 2,057 (1 per cent) since Andy Burnham became prime minister.

Andy Burnham said Labour has a “solemn responsibility” to stop the “politics of poison seeping into our streets”.

Speaking to the Parliamentary Labour Party at a closed-doors meeting in Parliament on Monday evening, the prime minister said there was “a lot at stake” requiring the party to “counter fear with positivity and hope”.

He said Labour could “change this country for the better” and must “never accept the narrative that there’s nothing we can do”.

Setting the tone ahead of Labour’s annual conference, he said the focus would be on bringing back hope and laying out more detail about the next phase of his administration, which would be “boldly, authentically, confidently Labour”.