Burnham and Miliband will have trust issues with future Israeli government

Last Monday, Andy Burnham “kissed hands” with King Charles and became the fourth prime minister in the king’s short reign – and the fourth prime minister in as many years. Burnham sees his task as the rebuilding of the UK after a decade of instability following Brexit – to provide “a circuit breaker” in the periodic replacement of British leaders. If promises are to be believed, Burnham’s ascendency means a decentralisation of power and an implicit rolling back of the trickle-down philosophy of Thatcherism.

Burnham appointed Ed Miliband as his Foreign Secretary – probably as a means of avoiding his appointment as Chancellor of the Exchequer. Miliband is Jewish and on the Left of the Labour Party. He is also the scion of a distinguished political family. He challenged his brother David for the Labour leadership in 2010 – and surprisingly defeated him with the help of the trade unions.

The subsequent bad blood between them after this event was also coloured by a perception that David was more interested in Israel than his brother. On his appointment on Monday, Ed Miliband released a statement which characterised himself more as a Jewish Briton than as a British Jew:

“My parents came to Britain as Jewish refugees from the Nazis. To them, Britain was both a sanctuary and a beacon of hope in the global fight against fascism. I will carry my parents’ faith in that spirit of Britain to my role representing our country.”

His father, Ralph Miliband, was a renowned socialist academic at the London School of Economics – and a member of the Marxist-Zionist Hashomer Hatzair in his youth before fleeing to the UK on the last boat out of Belgium in May 1940 in order to escape the Nazi advance.