Zarah Sultana with Jeremy Corbyn in 2022. He said earlier he wants to offer an alternative to Labour. Photograph: Stefan Rousseau/PA
Sultana lost the whip last year and she and ex-party leader want to enlist other independent MPs and campaigners
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She said in a statement posted on X that she was “resigning from the Labour Party”.
“Jeremy Corbyn and I will co-lead the founding of a new party, with other independent MPs, campaigners and activists across the country.”
She said that “Westminster is broken but the real crisis is deeper” and the “two-party system offers nothing but managed decline and broken promises”.
She added: “A year ago I was suspended by the Labour Party for voting to abolish the two-child benefit cap and lift 400,000 children out of poverty. I’d do it again. I voted against scrapping winter fuel payments for pensioners. I’d do it again. Now, the government wants to make disabled people suffer; they just can’t decide how much.”
Keir Starmer says that the Labour Party under his leadership all feel a small part of Scunthorpe.Keir Starmer commits to play the caretaker role for Capitalism through the “hard times”.Keir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone obect to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza’s hospitals and universities,mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel.
4 July 2025 1.20pm
It appears that Jeremy Corbyn has yet to comment regarding Zarah Sultana’s announcement. I don’t know what’s going on and can only speculate.
There have been false starts of a new left party before, the announcement itself is a political event signalling that there is an extent of opposition organising against shameless genocidalist Keir Starmer. I would expect that the old school Socialists like Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell would prefer to stay in the Labour Party. That’s where they’ve always been, after all. Is there a plan or is it just testing the waters?
At 6:30pm tonight, Corbyn is due to speak at an event with independent candidate Leanne Mohamad about “Breaking the Two-Party Nightmare“. That would be an appropriate place for Corbyn to address Sultana’s announcement. So we may know a bit more by the end of the day.
Zarah Sultana speaking after a march organised by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, from Russell Square to Whitehall in central London, June 21, 2025
This week, MPs shamefully approved the proscription of Palestine Action. Several challenged the move in the Commons. Zarah Sultana, Independent MP for Coventry South, gave an outstanding speech in condemnation. Because of the exceptional gravity of the issue, we reproduce her speech, lightly edited, here.
TWENTY-ONE years ago, a human rights barrister … defended an activist who broke into RAF Fairford trying to disable a bomber to prevent war crimes in Iraq. That became a landmark case in lawful, non-violent direct action against an illegal war. That barrister is now our Prime Minister, Keir Starmer KC. He argued that it was not terrorism, but conscience.
Fast-forward to June 20 2025: two Palestine Action activists entered RAF Brize Norton and sprayed red paint — red paint, not fire — on aircraft linked to surveillance flights over Gaza. Instead of prosecuting them for criminal damage, the Home Secretary is using the Terrorism Act 2000 to proscribe Palestine Action as a terrorist group.
This is an unprecedented and dangerous overreach of the state. Never before in Britain has it been a crime to simply support a group.
Palestine Action’s real crime is shutting down Elbit Systems sites that arm the Israeli military; its true offence is being audacious enough to expose the blood-soaked ties between this government and the genocidal Israeli apartheid state and its war machine.
Let us be clear: to equate a spray can of paint with a suicide bomb is not just absurd; it is grotesque. It is a deliberate distortion of the law to chill dissent, criminalise solidarity and suppress the truth.
Amnesty International, Liberty, over 266 senior lawyers and UN special rapporteurs have all opposed these draconian measures. Under this order, anyone expressing moral support for a proscribed group could face 14 years in prison. That includes wearing a badge, wearing a T-shirt, sharing a post or calling for de-proscription.
And journalists have no exemption either: there is no legal protection for reporting favourably, even factually, about Palestine Action.
Let us not forget what is happening in Gaza, where the real crimes are being ignored: hospitals bombed, children starved, and tens of thousands of people killed. Palestinian children now suffer more amputations per capita than children anywhere else on Earth.
Israel is on trial for genocide at the International Court of Justice, and the Israeli Prime Minister faces an International Criminal Court arrest warrant, yet the government’s response is to criminalise solidarity and to continue exporting lethal F-35 jets that are decimating Gaza.
We also have to understand the history of this country and what built our democracy: the tradition of civil disobedience that includes the suffragettes, without whom I would not have the vote, let alone the privilege of being here as an MP.
Even those who oppose Palestine Action’s tactics must recognise the vast gulf between criminal damage and terrorism. If this order passes, what and who is next — climate protesters, striking workers, feminists in the street?
Already we have seen a wider crackdown on our civil liberties — musicians censored, journalists arrested, and demonstrators, including MPs sitting here, harassed — and now this government want to use anti-terror laws to make peaceful protest itself a crime. If our democratic institutions functioned as they should, none of this would be necessary.
If this proscription passes, we have to understand that no campaign will be safe tomorrow. We have to recognise that this will go down as a dark day in our country’s history … People will ask, “Which side were you on?” and I stand with the millions of people who oppose genocide, because I am one of them. I oppose the blood-soaked hands of this government trying to silence us. So I say this loudly and proudly: we are all Palestine…
UK Labour Party government ministers Keir Starmer, Angela Rayner and Rachel Reeves explain that they are partners complicit in Israel’s Gaza genocide. The UK has provided Israel with arms, military and air force support. They explain that they don’t do gas chambers but do do forced marches, starvation, destroy hospitals, mass-murders of journalists and healthcare workers.Keir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone obect to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza’s hospitals and universities,mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel.Keir “I support Zionism without Qualification” Starmer supporting genocide.
F35 fighters on the flight deck of HMS Prince of Wales, the Royal Navy’s flagship aircraft carrier, in Plymouth, Devon
SIR KEIR STARMER’S militarism faces mass opposition after he announced today that the government is to buy 12 new fighter jets capable of delivering nuclear weapons.
The Prime Minister used the Nato summit in The Hague to break the news, which campaigners called a breach of Britain’s obligations under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
The new aeroplanes and nuclear weapons will be US-built but flown by RAF crews, based at RAF facilities in East Anglia and assigned to the Nato nuclear mission.
Under the plan, Britain will buy 12 F-35A jets, which are capable of carrying conventional munitions and also the B61-12 gravity bomb, which is three times more powerful than the weapon dropped on Hiroshima in 1945.
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In the Commons, independent MP Jeremy Corbyn demanded that ministers explain how the decision complied with treaties “which require nuclear weapons states not to allow proliferation and take steps towards nuclear disarmament.”
The Stop the War Coalition asked: “On what planet does buying F-35s for around £80 million each from the US company Lockheed Martin equal job creation at home while cutting welfare?”
Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament general secretary Sophie Bolt called the planned purchase a “disastrous decision by the Starmer government that makes the world more dangerous and puts the British population on the nuclear front line.”
She pledged mass action against the deployments.
“The millions that will be spent on these jets, and the millions more that would be needed to upgrade RAF Marham, will be coming out of further cuts to public services, to our NHS and our social care system,” Ms Bolt said.
He likes to keep a low profile. But Sir Trevor Chinn is one of the most powerful men in British politics.
The retired businessman has donated millions to politicians, facilitated Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s rise to power, helped destroy the movement around Jeremy Corbyn, and, above all, has made sure that both major parties support Israel and its expansionist project in the Middle East.
MintPress News profiles perhaps the most influential man in the pro-Israel lobby and lifts the veil of anonymity he hides behind.
Israel’s Man
In November, President Isaac Herzog personally awarded Chinn the Israeli Medal of Honor for his “service to the state [of Israel] and the Jewish people.” The past year, President Herzog said in his presentation speech, was “the most difficult since the founding of the state.” However, he noted, his country was extremely fortunate to have “great friends and supporters in the world who fight alongside us against antisemitism, defend Israel’s name in the media, and have long fought for Israel’s place among the nations.”
Chinn has a decades-long history of promoting Israeli interests in the United Kingdom and beyond. In 2005, as co-chairman of the Israel-Britain Business Council, he led a delegation to Israel to participate in Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s Conference for Export and International Cooperation. The conference was an attempt to bring back economic growth to Israel after three years of stagnation as a result of the Second Palestinian intifada.
In 2018, he co-hosted a high-profile celebration of former Israeli President Chaim Herzog attended by some of the most powerful figures in British politics, including former Prime Minister Tony Blair. Held at the exclusive Spencer House in London, the event celebrated the British-born president, honoring him as a “warrior and statesman.” Herzog was an officer in the Israeli military during the Nakba, the ethnic cleansing of around 750,000 Palestinians in order to establish the State of Israel.
As the longstanding president of United Jewish Israel Appeal, a group that aims to increase British Jews’ connections to Israel, Chinn has helped to raise millions to fund free birthright-style trips to the Middle East. One 2023 event at London’s Kensington Palace alone raised £1 million (U.S. $1.36 million). The function was attended by former prime minister Naftali Bennett, who praised his work profusely.
Chinn’s ties to Israel go far beyond economics and culture. Last October, at the height of the Israeli attack on Gaza, the 89-year-old tycoon quietly met with the U.K. Foreign Office to advise them on arms exports to Israel. Officially, the British government claimed they were merely “discussing geopolitics with [a] businessman.” Documents obtained by investigative journalist John McEvoy, however, revealed the real purpose of the meeting was far less innocent.
Bankrolling the British Cabinet
Chinn, McEvoy told MintPress, plays an “important but overlooked role in British politics.” Since the 1980s, he noted, Chinn has funded both Labour Friends of Israel (LFI) and Conservative Friends of Israel (CFI), pressure groups within the U.K.’s two largest political parties. He was also a member of the executive committee of the Britain Israel Communications and Research Centre (BICOM), the most influential pro-Israel lobbying organization in the United Kingdom.
“Quantitative analyses of these groups’ activities are instructive,” McEvoy said, adding:
Eighty percent of Tory MPs are members of CFI and, between 2012 and 2022, the organization paid for elected members to go on more overseas trips than any other donor. Last year, LFI counted some 75 MPs as supporters, while 32 sitting Labour members had accepted funding from the group. For its part, BICOM has flown scores of journalists to Tel Aviv since the turn of the century.”
As such, Chinn sits at the head of a massive influence operation aiming to make sure that Great Britain continues to support Israeli interests. The scope of this operation is staggering; pro-Israel lobby groups have funded the majority of the British cabinet. In total, 13 out of 25 sitting cabinet members have accepted money directly from Chinn, or pro-Israel groups, according to McEvoy’s investigation.
This includes many extremely powerful figures, such as Foreign Secretary David Lammy, Home Secretary Yvette Cooper, and Health Secretary Wes Streeting. Chinn himself has donated hundreds of thousands of pounds to these individuals.
Without a doubt, though, the most important recipient of his largesse is Prime Minister Keir Starmer himself. In 2020, Chinn donated £50,000 (approximately $68,000) to Starmer, bankrolling his campaign to become leader of the Labour Party. The donation was not registered until five days after the election.
It was around this time that Starmer very publicly began to shift his position on Israel. Until 2019, he had been a member of Labour Friends of Palestine and the Middle East, and promised to “put human rights at the heart of foreign policy.” Yet just a few weeks after he received Chinn’s money, he publicly stated, “I support Zionism without qualification.”
His administration has vocally supported Israel, sending weapons to the country and providing other military assistance from U.K. military bases in Cyprus. It has also cracked down on pro-Palestine protests at home and defended Israel in international bodies such as the United Nations. In 2021, Starmer’s office even went so far as to hire Assaf Kaplan, a former Israeli spy, to conduct what it calls “social listening” within the party.
Lowkey, a rapper, activist, and host of “The Watchdog” on MintPress, has tracked Chinn’s activities closely, stating that:
Trevor Chinn is a key officer of the Zionist movement in this country. He is a vehicle through which the Israel lobby is able to fund key political figures, like Keir Starmer and David Lammy, and thus extend Israeli influence over what happens in British politics.”
Shaping the Labour Party
Tony Blair was the driving force behind Labour’s move away from social democracy and its embrace of big business, and Chinn’s cash helped make it possible. According to a 1996 report in The Independent, Chinn was one of several Labour megadonors who each contributed around £500,000 to bankroll Blairism and ensure its success.
Along with its economic approach, Labour’s traditional foreign policy positions also shifted. As former chairman of LFI, Baron Mendelsohn approvingly noted at the time,
Blair has attacked the anti-Israelism that had existed in the Labour Party. Old Labour was cowboys-and-Indians politics, picking underdogs to support, but the milieu has changed. Zionism is pervasive in New Labour. It is automatic that Blair will come to Labour Friends of Israel meetings.”
To this day, Blair maintains a close relationship with Israel. He is a patron of the Jewish National Fund, the largest builder of illegal settlements in the West Bank. His wife, Cherie, meanwhile, worked as an adviser to NSO Group, the controversial Israeli software firm behind the Pegasus spying software.
Chinn (left) looks at British Prime Minister David Cameron during a Jewish Leadership Council meeting at 10 Downing Street, Jan. 16, 2012. Kirsty Wigglesworth | AP
Since Blair, Chinn has continued to fund senior Labour figures. The one notable exception was during Jeremy Corbyn’s tenure, from 2015 to 2020. Corbyn, a lifelong socialist, anti-imperialist, and advocate for Palestinian statehood, was unexpectedly elected leader of the party in a landslide.
Almost immediately, senior figures in the Labour establishment began organizing against him. And they were helped by Chinn’s money and connections.
Chinn provided the financial backing for Labour Together, a think tank of right-wing figures with the stated goal of “defeat[ing] Corbynism,” and “win[ning] Labour back from the left.” He also financed the political ambitions of Corbyn opponents, including Owen Smith, Ruth Smeeth, and Deputy Leader Tom Watson. Corbyn was relentlessly attacked from all sides and suffered constant accusations of antisemitism designed to undermine public support for his project.
Also in Labour Together’s crosshairs were Corbyn-supporting media outlets, such as The Canary. A left-wing alternative media site, The Canary rapidly expanded its reach to 8.5 million monthly viewers. Labour Together devised a plan to, in their own words, “Kill The Canary.” To that end, they launched a sham “stop funding fake news” drive, claiming the outlet was spreading antisemitic content, and putting pressure on advertisers to pull their commercials from the site. Like the campaign against Corbyn, the antisemitism claims were false, but effective, and The Canary’s finances and reach were dealt a serious blow.
Equal Opportunities Oligarch
Chinn, however, is far from a strictly partisan donor. The elderly business magnate has also funded the Conservative Friends of Israel, the Tory equivalent of Labour Friends of Israel. CFI is, if anything, more influential than its Labour counterpart. Publicly available data shows that the organization has funded at least 118 Conservative members of parliament to travel to Israel on 160 occasions, providing over £330,000 (U.S. $450,000) towards the visits. Around 80% of Conservative MPs are members of CFI.
CFI wields significant influence within the halls of power, enough to force Prime Minister Boris Johnson to drop his plans to appoint Alan Duncan as his Middle East Minister. In his memoirs, Duncan noted that their opposition was “for no other reason than that I believe in the rights of the Palestinians.” Johnson was reportedly indignant. “They [the Israelis] shouldn’t behave like this,” he said. “The CFI and the Israelis think they control the Foreign Office. And they do!’” Duncan said, adding that Israeli penetration into British politics amounts to what he called “entrenched espionage” and a national security threat.
Going further back, Chinn repeatedly lobbied the administration of John Major (1990-1997) on its Middle East policy. “He can be quite a tough protagonist of the Israeli cause and is by no means a dove… My own feeling is that he is not very subtly tuned into the Israeli political scene,” one Foreign Office official wrote about Chinn in 1991.
The overall goal of his activities—the political donations, private meetings, funded trips and media work—McEvoy told MintPress, is to “persuade politicians and journalists that supporting Israel is in their interests.” Chinn and the wider pro-Israel lobby employ a “carrot and stick approach,” whereby good behavior is rewarded with free trips, favorable media coverage and political donations, and bad behavior is punished with a loss of funding, political flak, and pressure campaigns. Thus, McEvoy concludes:
While many legislators in Britain are already avowed Zionists and need little persuading, the carrot and stick approach can achieve an important disciplining effect on politicians who are either equivocal or easily shunned into silence, which accounts for a significant proportion given the extent of careerism and cowardice present in Westminster.”
You Can Cut Down the Flowers, But You Can’t Stop the Spring
Sir Trevor Chinn is far from a self-made man. He inherited his substantial wealth and power from his father, Rosser, who owned the automotive giant, Lex Services, now called the Royal Automobile Club (RAC). In addition to his business interests, Rosser was also the president of the Jewish National Fund, helping Israel dispossess Palestinians of their land.
Trevor served as chief executive of the RAC and later became chairman of its chief competitors, the Automobile Association (AA) and Kwik Fit. Since 1973, he has served as president of the United Jewish Israel Appeal and holds or has held a number of other significant positions of influence. These include serving as a governor of Tel Aviv University, and his positions on the executive committees of the Jewish Leadership Council and BICOM.
In 2023, BICOM participated in an attempt to remove the music of MintPress’ Lowkey from the streaming service Spotify. Their plan failed, thanks to massive public pushback and widespread resistance from top names in the entertainment industry.
“I was, at that time, identified as a key target. But we defeated them, thanks to MintPress, The Electronic Intifada, and all the amazing people who supported me,” Lowkey said. “It really does go to show that these lobby groups are really only powerful when they are not confronted.”
One successful cancellation operation Chinn did participate in, however, was the 2014 campaign against a north London arts venue. After finding out that the event was sponsored by the Israeli Embassy, the Tricycle Theater refused to host the U.K. Jewish Film Festival.
Israel, at the time, had just launched Operation Protective Edge, a bombardment of Gaza that killed over 2,000 people. Chinn sprang into action, threatening to pull his funding from the theater unless they reversed their decision. “We are as a community under pressure from the boycott movement. We can’t accept boycotts and whenever one comes along we have to fight it,” he said.
Tricycle was eventually forced to concede after Culture Minister Sajid Javid—himself a member of Conservative Friends of Israel—“made it absolutely clear what might happen to their funding if they, or if anyone, tries that kind of thing again.”
For all his work, though, Chinn has not been able to stem the tide of pro-Palestinian sentiment across the United Kingdom and beyond. In November 2023, an estimated one million people attended a London demonstration calling for a ceasefire.
Since then, polling shows that public attitudes towards Israel have only hardened.
A recent YouGov survey found that more than twice as many Britons support Palestine (32%) as Israel (14%). Only 17% of the country holds positive views of Israel (including 4% that are very positive), compared to 63% negative (including 39% that are highly negative). And the vast majority of the country supports an arms embargo, with only 13% opposing an end to weapons sales to Tel Aviv. Worse still for Israel, these are among the best numbers in Europe for their cause.
In response, both Conservative and Labour governments have cracked down on public support for Palestine, suppressing demonstrations, arresting protesters, and harassing and intimidating pro-Palestine journalists.
How much, if any, influence Chinn had on these responses is a matter of debate. But what is incontrovertible is that he and his network of pro-Israel organizations are not an omnipotent force. This is especially true when they and their activities are exposed to the wider public.
Feature photo | Sir Trevor Chinn (left), pictured alongside Jacob Rothschild (center) and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair (right) | Editing by MintPress News
Genocide denier and Current UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is quoted that he supports Zionism without qualification. He also confirms that UK air force support has been essential in Israel’s mass-murdering genocide. Includes URLs https://www.declassifieduk.org/keir-starmers-100-spy-flights-over-gaza-in-support-of-israel/ and https://youtu.be/O74hZCKKdpAUK Labour Party government Keir Starmer, Angela Rayner and Rachel Reeves explain that they are participants and complicit in Israel’s Gaza genocide providing Israel with army and air force support. They explain that they don’t do gas chambers but do do forced marches, starvation, destroy hospitals, mass-murders of journalists and healthcare workers.Vote Labour for Genocide.Keir Starmer warns against following the https://onaquietday.org blog.
Zarah Sultana speaking after a march organised by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, from Russell Square to Whitehall in central London, June 21, 2025
