Starmer's Hypocrisy SLAMMED as Sudan Aid Package BACKFIRES!

Right, so Keir Starmer has been caught out being a total hypocrite yet again over foreign policy and over humanitarian aid particularly, because where he’s sitting on his hands as Israel continues to blockade any aid getting into Gaza, where he’s cut international aid inflicting poverty on millions in desperate need to shore up his warmongering and defence spending, especially in light of his tub thumping rhetoric towards Russia over the war in Ukraine and against a backdrop of getting severely rinsed in alternative and independent media as well as across social media for his conduct on these matters, he’s now found a small sum of money he hopes will give him a much needed boost ahead of local elections, being handed to Sudan as they cross the 2 year anniversary of their ongoing civil war between the government backed Sudanese Armed Forces, the SAF and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, or RSF, who split from the government in April 2023, turning on them, backed by the Chadian warlord Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, or Hemedti as he’s become better known. Starmer has managed to find, for a nation where some 12 million people – equivalent to roughly a fifth of the entire UK population - have been displaced, the largest displacement of people on the planet right now, despite how little media attention this war has garnered, a paltry £120million, but worse, the UK is, like Israel and Gaza, complicit in this civil war as well and instead of gaining a humanitarian win, Starmer has instead shone a light on even more UK backed atrocity, which, like Gaza has historical as well as current precedent.
Right, so the British government of Keir Starmer, his government as he calls it, so perfectly reasonable to place blame where it is due squarely on him by his own words, announced a £120 million aid package to Sudan, torn apart by civil war, now entering its third year. On the face of it, this is an entirely welcome move, there is surely no such thing as bad humanitarian aid and this was presented as a gesture of international solidarity with a suffering population. But this is Starmer. Never has there been a Prime Minister as self serving as well as dishonest as this one, and yes, I do remember Boris Johnson, but a closer examination of what this Starmer led government is doing here to my mind reveals something far more cynical, because the timing, the amount, and the context of the aid paint a picture not of compassion, but of political self-preservation. This is a paltry sum that will not go very far at all, will rapidly be swallowed up, cash Starmer has still evidently been able to find though, for a Labour government floundering in absolute moral hypocrisy, desperate to undo the damage wrought by its unapologetic support of Israel as it carries out a genocide in Gaza, and unwilling to confront its cozy relationship with the United Arab Emirates, who happened to be a key player in fuelling this war in Sudan.
Before we get into that though, lets lay a bit of context out here for those who haven’t picked up on my previous Sudan coverage, or indeed coverage elsewhere and how Sudan got to where it is now.
Sudan has been engulfed in a brutal war since April 2023, when tensions between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces exploded into open conflict. The RSF, are basically the modern face of the Janjaweed militias responsible for historic atrocities in Darfur in particular, and they have since civil war broke out unleashed a campaign of terror that has included rape, mass killings, looting, and ethnic cleansing. The humanitarian consequences have been absolutely staggering: over 12 million people displaced, famine-like conditions in multiple regions affecting half of Sudan’s 50 million strong population, and a breakdown of essential services including healthcare, water, and sanitation, so many parallels to Gaza you could say therefore, but this is on a larger scale. An example of the latest atrocities happening out in Sudan reported on just this week was at least 30 civilians being killed in El-Fasher, in Darfur by RSF fighters once again.
Yet Sudan’s suffering has remained largely absent from Western media headlines, dwarfed in the news by the war in Gaza. The UN describes Sudan as the site of the largest civilian displacement crisis on the planet, and yet the West has offered mostly only silence, I can only assume its because Israel is an ally, seen as an asset and news must be spun in their favour, but no such alliances exist in East Africa and when it does get some attention, it ends up being due to performative gestures like Starmer’s latest aid announcement.
This sudden outpouring of aid from a government that slashed foreign development funding and international aid reeks of political machination. How can Starmer and his ilk turn this to their political advantage, when on so many fronts they are on their backsides right now in the eyes of the British public and this is particularly cynical.
Just two months ago as a glaring example of this, Anneliese Dodds resigned from her position as Labour’s international development minister, citing concerns over aid cuts that prioritised military spending and support for Ukraine over humanitarian relief for places like Gaza and like Sudan. Now, faced with growing public outrage over Labour’s unwavering support for Israel during its genocidal war in Gaza, Starmer has magically found some cash, the magic money tree does exist, its called of Bank of England, they’ll create however much money is needed, which is why there is always money for war and Starmer seeks redemption through a conveniently timed aid package to another war zone.
So this is not moral leadership, this is not Starmer doing right for a change, or finding his morality—it is damage control. British citizens are incensed by Starmer's refusal to condemn Israel's actions, refusal to call it a genocide and are not going to be fooled by this thin veneer of humanitarianism. This aid to Sudan appears more like an attempt to buy back political capital rather than any sincere commitment to ending human suffering, because Starmer cannot credibly claim to oppose war crimes in Sudan while turning a blind eye to them in Gaza. The hypocrisy is as staggering as it is insulting.
And the hypocrisy deepens even further than just the more obvious point of saying what about Gaza? The RSF turning on the government didn’t happen without backing and so lets consider the role of the United Arab Emirates in the Sudanese conflict, a Middle Eastern Arab nation that right now seems to be making a habit of late of getting on the wrong side of conflicts. According to reports presented to the International Court of Justice, because Sudan has dragged the UAE to the world court, just as South Africa did with Israel, Sudan has accused the UAE of being a "driving force" behind the genocide occurring within its borders, citing the Gulf state's military and financial support for the RSF and this was just two weeks ago, yet have you heard anything about it? Activists and pro-democracy groups have been taking to the streets across Sudan, the capital of Khartoum notably calling for a boycott of the UAE for its destabilising actions. Middle East Eye covered a BDS-style initiative against the UAE, an excerpt of that reading:
‘Ghaida Hamdun, a founder of the Instagram-based For Sudanese Liberation, recently launched the Defund the UAE (DFUAE) initiative. She told MEE a major target of the campaign is making sure that people are “just not going” to the UAE, a popular tourism and business destination.
Hamdun was amongst the activists who campaigned extensively on social media to pressure rapper Macklemore to cancel his Dubai show last year.
The American musician, who has been vocal in his support for Palestine since the start of Israel’s war on Gaza, cancelled his concert in August “in solidarity with the people of Sudan and to boycott doing business in the UAE”.
His widely read social media statement was edited by Sudanese activists, including Hamdun.
“At the moment there was a lot of hype,” Hamdun said.
However, despite what she described as a “domino effect” of increased awareness on social media, she added that “with things like this, it’s like people kind of forget and move on”.’
Such is the problem, people do move on unless we keep talking about it, so we have to keep bringing attention to the ongoing atrocities, be they in Gaza, or Sudan or elsewhere, holding those behind, those backing them to account, which does now bring us back to Keir Starmer, because we need to look at his aid package now, set against the UAE’s support for the RSF.
You see last year, back in December, Starmer was in the UAE, seeking trade deals and investment opportunities and lauding the very regime that at that point had been fuelling the violence in Sudan for a year and a half. This is also the same UAE that has openly opposed Palestinian independence and backed the Trump plan to expel Gazans from the Gaza Strip, claiming to to be unavoidable, though when that won considerable backlash, they did backtrack on that statement somewhat. The same UAE that is now aiding a paramilitary group accused of genocide. That Starmer, a former human rights lawyer as we know him to be, sees no issue with this tells us everything about the moral compromises he is willing to make for the sake of a deal, trade between the UK and the UAE coming in at roughly £23billion a year, so put that £120million aid package for Sudan in context of that.
Adding insult to injury, a high-profile conference was held in London in this month as well, UK organised at that, to discuss raising funds for Sudan. Where obviously Britain was there, along with France, Germany, the European Union and the African Union, not a single Sudanese voice was invited to speak. It was for just one day, not even negotiating a path to peace was on the table, it was largely for show, Diplomats, aid officials, and Western bureaucrats gathered to pontificate on Sudan’s future without any input from Sudanese civil society, government, or any of the myriad diaspora groups that live there as well. If that is what passes for solidarity in Keir Starmer’s head, then he needs his head reading, because this is not solidarity. It is neo-colonial paternalism masquerading as concern.
The exclusion of Sudanese voices from discussions about their own country mirrors the historic arrogance of British foreign policy—the same arrogance that carved up Sudan during the colonial era, laying the groundwork for decades of instability. Just as Britain bears historic responsibility for the crisis in Palestine, it owes a similar moral debt to Sudan, the historic precedent, the familiarity of the mistakes of white supremacy and western colonialist mindsets are there in Sudan, that made the mistake of creating Israel out of land belonging to the Palestinians. But under Starmer, the UK has chosen to prioritise arms deals and trade partnerships with repressive Gulf monarchies over justice for the victims of wars that they help fuel.
Starmer’s willful blindness to genocide is utterly inexcusable and unforgivable and again we can point to not just what he is saying and doing in the here and now to back that up, but his conduct in the past showing the scale of his hypocrisy too. In 2014, back working as a barrister following his time as Director of Public Prosecutions, he played a leading role in a case that labelled Serbian actions in Croatia as genocide. He knows what genocide looks like. And yet today, still, he refuses to utter the word in relation to Gaza, despite overwhelming evidence presented by human rights groups and legal scholars. His refusal to name Israel’s crimes for what they are—crimes against humanity—calls into question his morals and ethics and his own fundamental belief in human rights, despite his previous career.
Likewise, his £120 million aid package to Sudan does not absolve Britain of complicity. The UK has sold weapons to the UAE and Saudi Arabia, despite their repeated involvement in human rights abuses across the Middle East and North Africa. We cannot ignore that British-made arms may well be used by UAE-backed forces in Sudan. This is not just negligence—it is complicity.
An excerpt from the Campaign Against The Arms Trade, CAAT on UK-UAE arms sales reading:
‘The UAE is one of the UK’s biggest arms customers although, compared with other suppliers, the UK’s sales there are comparatively modest. This is not through choice. Despite a massive UK government effort, led by then Prime Minister David Cameron, BAE Systems failed to secure a contract to supply 60 Eurofighter Typhoons in 2013. Talks later started with France about the Rafale fighter.
The UK’s 2015 National Security Strategy and Strategic Defence and Security Review made a commitment to establish a permanent British Defence Staff in the Gulf. This is based in Dubai.’
Far from rehabilitating Labour’s image, the Sudan aid package has only exposed the Starmer regime’s hypocrisy in the face of war and genocide. It has highlighted the contradictions in Starmer’s approach to international affairs: loudly proclaiming human rights while making deals with despots; offering token aid while supporting militarised regimes; mourning victims abroad only when it serves domestic political interests.
If Keir Starmer truly believed in justice, he would call for an arms embargo on the UAE, Sudan is far from their only victims, they were complicit in the war on Yemen being driven by Saudi Arabia and the US as well as another for instance. He would condemn Israel’s genocide in Gaza as firmly as he condemns RSF atrocities in Sudan, or Russian atrocities in Ukraine. He would work with Sudanese civil society, not hold conferences without them. He would acknowledge the UK’s historical role in both Sudan and Palestine and act from a place of reparative justice, not political optics for personal gain as this appears to be.
£120 million is not enough to erase government hypocrisy. It is not enough to soothe the wounded conscience of a party that has betrayed its values. And it is certainly not enough to save Sudan in any meaningful way at all.
Of course it is not just the Starmer regime trying to absolve themselves of any semblance of guilt or responsibility here, Israel have attempted to give a masterclass in it, but instead went from the desperate to the deranged inside a couple of minutes and it was all caught on camera too. Watch the clip and get all the details of Israel’s ongoing attempts to pretend it has any kind of justification to commit genocide in this video recommendation here as your suggested next watch. Please do also hit like, share and subscribe if you haven’t already done so, so as to ensure you don’t miss out on all new content published daily, as well as supporting the channel at the same time which is very much appreciated, holding power to account for ordinary working class people and I will hopefully catch you on the next vid. Cheers folks.