Starmer’s IHRA Obsession Just Became a Political Time Bomb

Right, so Keir Starmer has built a government where racism comes with a ranking system. Criticise Israel and you’ll face the full weight of Labour discipline; question Islamophobia and you’ll be told well, free speech has to come first. He guards Israel like it’s a legal client, wielding the IHRA definition of antisemitism as both shield and sword — a way to silence dissent while proving his loyalty to the establishment. But when the same logic is applied to Muslims, the principle suddenly collapses. The Islamophobia definition is scrapped, the promise of equal protection abandoned, and the hierarchy of Labour’s racism exposed all over again. What Starmer calls “restoring integrity” looks a lot more like selective morality — one standard for Zionism, another for Islam, and nothing left of equality except a filing cabinet full of exceptions marked up as ‘for political use only.’
Right, so Keir Starmer likes to present himself as the lawyer who brought reason back to British politics — the clean pair of hands who would end the culture wars, rebuild trust, and enforce equality without fear or favour. Yet when you trace his record, the story unravels into something else entirely. Beneath the language of fairness, Starmer has built a structure of moral exceptions. He has not repaired Britain’s equality framework; he has rewritten it to serve power.
Before we delve into the moral righteousness of Starmer with regards to antisemitism and his apparent now scrapping of an Islamophobia definition in the name of free speech, it has to be acknowledged, setting all of that apart, that Britain already has one of the most comprehensive anti-discrimination systems in the world. The Equality Act 2010 protects people from harassment or victimisation on the grounds of religion or belief, alongside race, sex, disability, and other characteristics. It covers Jews, Muslims, Christians, Hindus, Sikhs, and atheists without distinction. In that sense, the legal foundation for combating antisemitism and Islamophobia were already in place long before Starmer ever left the Crown Prosecution Service, let alone entered politics.
But Starmer’s government has created a hierarchy inside that equality. It has enforced one special definition of antisemitism — the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) text — and since then has gone on to abandon the formal definition of Islamophobia that was being prepared for adoption. One community now receives a shield that extends into politics; another is told that protection must yield to free speech. Equality has not evolved — it has imploded under the weight of its own exceptions. And for a leader of a party, which has already had its inherent inequalities exposed via the Forde Report, within which KC Martin Forde coined that phrase Hierarchy of Racism, it has simply gone on to demonstrate nothing has changed within Starmer’s party.
The Equality Act’s design was simple: one statute to replace decades of fragmented discrimination law. Section 10 established religion or belief as a protected characteristic, prohibiting direct and indirect discrimination, harassment, or victimisation in employment, education, housing, and public services. The Equality and Human Rights Commission later confirmed that both antisemitism and Islamophobia already fall under that umbrella.
The strength of the Act lies in its universality. A Jewish employee abused for being Jewish and a Muslim employee abused for being Muslim have the same statutory recourse. The law is blind to theology; it punishes prejudice, not ideas. The moment a government begins to carve out new, group-specific definitions as has happened, the weaponisation of antisemitism to protect Israeli interests, Zionist interests as we have seen, it turns equality from a universal principle into a catalogue of exceptions. That can only be seen in this context as a racist endeavour therefore surely?
The IHRA “working definition” of antisemitism was drafted in 2016. It runs for a single paragraph and lists eleven “examples,” seven of which explicitly reference the State of Israel. They include denying “the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavour,” and “applying double standards” by expecting behaviour “not demanded of any other democratic nation.”
Although presented as illustrative, these examples have become operational rules across British institutions. The then Tory government pressed universities to adopt the definition in 2020; Labour made it compulsory for party members. Under Starmer, adherence to IHRA became a loyalty test.
The consequences are well documented. Kenneth Stern, the definition’s author, told the US Congress that his text was being “weaponised to suppress political speech.” The University College London Foster Review found that IHRA “risks curbing free speech and academic freedom.” Legal analyses by Liberty and the European Legal Support Centre reached the same conclusion.
Starmer ignored the warnings. Although the IHRA definition was adopted by Labour in 2018 under Jeremy Corbyn, In 2020, after becoming Labour leader himself, Starmer declared IHRA the “gold standard” and directed every Labour branch to adopt it in full. Members who criticised Israeli policy or supported boycott campaigns were suspended, or expelled expelled. The purge of the left as it came to be called. Jewish anti-Zionists faced the same sanction as genuine antisemites, so if that isn’t weaponisation of antisemitism, I don’t know what is. Within two years, a definition meant to identify hatred had become a disciplinary weapon.
That decision created Britain’s first political exception inside equality law and was done ostensibly to rid the party of Corbyn and those who supported him within the party, something that has now been linked to Labour Together and Morgan McSweeney, all coming out in Paul Holden’s new book The Fraud, which is currently having excerpts published in The Canary. Judaism and Zionism were fused; criticism of Israeli state behaviour could now be treated as racial hatred. No other faith or ideology enjoys that kind of protection.
While IHRA enforcement hardened, the definition of Islamophobia collapsed. In 2018, the All-Party Parliamentary Group on British Muslims published a report called Islamophobia Defined, describing it as “a type of racism that targets expressions of Muslimness or perceived Muslimness.” Labour under Jeremy Corbyn endorsed the wording, and it remained on the party website into the early Starmer years.
Yet now, multiple outlets have confirmed that Labour had scrapped the plan to adopt any definition of Islamophobia. Government figures said the move was to protect free speech and the right to criticise religion. The party would instead use the phrase “anti-Muslim hate.” Shabana Mahmood the Labour Home Secretary has appointed former Tory Attorney General Dominic Grieve to draft a new, weaker formulation. Starmer’s Labour and the Tories, not a fig leaf between them.
Muslim organisations warned that it downgraded protection just as anti-Muslim incidents were rising sharply. Tell MAMA UK recorded 1,221 cases in 2023, up 46 per cent on the previous year. Without a recognised definition, those figures sit outside any systemic framework. They are treated as social disorder, not as racism and by doing that, ends up outside the framework of the Equality Act too.
Officials defended the change as necessary for free debate, arguing that religion must remain open to criticism. But the inconsistency is glaring. Free speech vanishes when Israel is criticised; it becomes sacred when Islam is, yet both are protected under the Equality Act anyway. Islam can seemingly be demonised when the question of Islamophobia by some commentators is a matter of debate as to whether it even exists, yet Antisme4itism is protected above and beyond all other faiths facing racist attack, due to the addition of the much weaponised IHRA definition. Equality in this country has had a hatchet taken to it for political convenience.
The “free-speech” defence being made now therefore dissolves under inspection. The government that claims definitions should not restrict debate already restricts debate where it touches Israel. The IHRA’s Israel-centric examples turn ordinary political critique into potential misconduct. Academics, artists, and councillors have been disciplined under its logic.
When it comes to Islamophobia, the same ministers invert the argument. They frame anti-Muslim rhetoric as expression, not prejudice. What emerges is not a principled defence of speech but a managed hierarchy of speech that matches Labour’s hierarchy of racism. The ability to offend is granted or withheld according to political value.
The pattern is visible in enforcement. Universities self-censor Palestine solidarity events to avoid breaching IHRA obligations. No university faces equivalent pressure to address anti-Muslim hate. Police monitor chants at Gaza marches but overlook routine vilification of Muslims online, or in protests led by far right figures. Free expression expands or contracts depending on the target.
This is the machinery of exception at work. The IHRA definition narrows the boundaries of legitimate criticism; the removal of an Islamophobia definition widens the boundaries of permissible abuse. Together they redefine the perimeter of acceptable racism.
The result is a visible two-tier system. Jewish communities are offered an expansive legal shield encompassing political identity. Muslim communities receive a diluted assurance that “hate” will be discouraged. The first is institutional protection; the second is moral suggestion.
By any objective reading, this meets the definition of institutional racism set out in, for example, the 1999 Macpherson Inquiry: policies that, intentionally or otherwise, produce unequal outcomes. One community’s discrimination is treated as existential; another’s as debatable.
This hierarchy also reshapes civic life. Councils invoke IHRA to cancel pro-Palestine art exhibitions, fearing accusations of antisemitism. Meanwhile, Islamophobic commentary on national television provokes debate but rarely sanction. A system claiming neutrality has become an instrument of imbalance.
Britain’s alliance with Israel and the United States makes the IHRA framework useful. It signals alignment and inoculates political leaders against allegations of antisemitism. By extending the definition to Israel’s critics, the government effectively polices dissent in line with allied policy.
There is also the matter of domestic control. Since the early 2000s the Prevent strategy and wider counter-extremism agenda have positioned Muslims as potential security risks. Recognising Islamophobia as structural racism would expose bias within those programmes. Keeping the term vague preserves flexibility for policing and surveillance.
Then there are the political optics: Starmer’s dual stance allows him to appear morally serious and politically safe. The IHRA definition appeases pro-Israel donors and establishment media; the abandonment of the Islamophobia definition reassures conservative commentators that Labour will not impose “blasphemy codes.” The contradiction is the policy.
Under Starmer, anti-racism functions as image maintenance. It is less about justice than about signalling respectability. The IHRA definition provides measurable compliance — a certificate of virtue.
The Islamophobia definition, by contrast, would have required confronting uncomfortable realities: the impact of counter-terror law, the racialisation of Muslims in media coverage, and patterns of discrimination in policing and employment. It would have demanded reform, not rhetoric. By discarding it, Labour avoided functionally doing some hard work that absolutely does need doing.
This is not unique to Britain. In Germany, IHRA enforcement has been written into law and used to restrict funding for pro-Palestinian activism. In France, the principle of laïcité is deployed to regulate Muslim expression while leaving pro-Israel advocacy untouched. Britain has adopted the same template — equality framed through the lens of alliance politics.
The outcome is predictable: the public language of tolerance masks the reality of a bureaucratic hierarchy beneath. Anti-racism has become an administrative brand, not a moral framework.
The first consequence of that is going to be legal fragmentation. Once definitions diverge, enforcement ceases to be consistent. A Jewish employee may rely on the IHRA definition to argue that criticism of Israel created a hostile workplace. A Muslim employee subjected to comparable hostility cannot reference an equivalent standard. The law therefore no longer speaks with one voice.
The second consequence is delegitimised dissent. With IHRA in force, criticism of Israeli policy can be deemed antisemitic regardless of intent or context. Councils and universities cancel events; public debate contracts. Activists supporting Palestinian rights operate under implied suspicion. Just look at multiple arrests on Pro Palestine protests to acknowledge the reality of that.
The third is normalised prejudice. Without a structural definition, Islamophobia is relegated to the status of bad manners. Rising incidents are logged but disconnected from cause. Tell MAMA’s figures show a sustained upward trend, but policy remains static and that won’t change for as long as it is implied this is not a racism problem, but protected as free speech even. And again the Equality goes out of the window, where the racism reality gets negated.
The fourth is public cynicism. Citizens watching one form of hate punished and another rationalised conclude that anti-racism itself is just a matter of opinion, damaging the protected nature of these characteristics. That perception corrodes trust in institutions and fuels resentment across communities.
Each consequence reinforces the others. The collapse of legal universality leads to social division; division becomes justification for further exceptional measures. Equality doesn’t erode slowly — it collapses in real time.
The deeper question is what anti-racism is for. Is it meant to protect people from discrimination or to protect power from scrutiny? We can all argue what Labour has done under Starmer, having seen what has played out over the 5 years he’s been party leader, to suggest, especially in light of scrapping or watering down a definition of Islamophobia, that it is the latter.
If the purpose is protection of people, the standard must be uniform. Criticism of any state or ideology is not racism; hatred of individuals for who they are is. That logic demands symmetry between antisemitism and Islamophobia. It’s so maddening it is already in place and yet the IHRA definition and this mockery being suggested now for Islamophobia are getting in the way of that, but this is the mess that has been created in the UK where racism is concerned.
If the purpose is protection of power, exceptions are inevitable. Governments will draw the line where criticism threatens allies or exposes their own practices. Starmer’s approach confirms the latter. The IHRA and the Islamophobia reversal serve the same function: they consolidate moral authority around the state and its allies.
This is anti-racism or racism itself as governance, depending on from what aspect you look at this, but it amounts to the same thing. The government defines who may be offended and who must tolerate offence. It polices discourse to stabilise its alliances and deflect accountability. In that sense, the rhetoric of equality has been weaponised into an instrument of control.
Restoring integrity to equality law requires returning to the foundation Parliament already wrote. The Equality Act covers discrimination on religious grounds without the need for parallel definitions. Reasserting that universality is the simplest reform.
Antisemitism should again mean hostility toward Jews as Jews, not criticism of a government or ideology, which means stripping out nonsense claims of racism for criticising Israel or Zionism. Islamophobia should mean hostility toward Muslims as Muslims, not theological disagreement. Both can be addressed under the same statute and measured by the same evidentiary standards. It’s already there.
To prevent further politicisation, equality enforcement should be insulated from ministerial discretion. Independent oversight — not party management — must decide whether speech or conduct constitutes harassment. The metric should be demonstrable harm, not political convenience. Take this out of the hands of politicians.
Finally, definitions must separate belief from behaviour. Protect people’s right to worship; protect everyone’s right to challenge belief systems. That boundary is the foundation of secular equality.
Starmer’s record shows how easily moral language can be turned into administrative hierarchy. The IHRA definition, for all of its faults as acknowledged by its author, now acts as a state-endorsed speech code aligned with foreign-policy interests. The scrapping of the Islamophobia definition plan functions as permission for prejudice framed as debate. The pattern is one of state control in the states interests: protect upward, manage downward.
The cost is legitimacy. Anti-racism that privileges one group’s sensitivities over another’s ceases to be credible. Citizens who witness this asymmetry internalise its message — that fairness is negotiable and that moral protection depends on political value.
This has social and international consequences. Domestically, it fractures solidarity among minorities who see their experiences ranked. Internationally, it weakens Britain’s standing when it lectures others on human rights. A state that legislates exceptions at home cannot claim morality abroad.
Equality, by definition, cannot have favourites. Once it does, it becomes hierarchy disguised as fairness. A hierarchy of racism.
Britain is not short of anti-racism law; it is short of consistent application of it. The Equality Act 2010 promised one standard for all. The IHRA definition and the scrapped Islamophobia definition have replaced that standard with two. One shields a political ally from criticism; the other leaves a vulnerable community exposed to prejudice repackaged as dialogue. The scrapping of the islamophobia definition, announces that attacks on them is OK, when really no additional definition ought to be necessary.
Starmer’s government claims to be restoring decency but has instead normalised double standards. What it calls balance is actually bias. What it calls moderation is management. The principle of equality has not been strengthened — it has been rewritten to accommodate power.
This is the quiet constitutional change of the moment: the conversion of equality law into a moral ranking system. Some racism is treated as intolerable, some as arguable, some as invisible. That is in and of itself racist. Anti-racism becomes a licence to decide who qualifies as a victim and who must prove they are one.
Equality has not eroded; it has imploded, collapsing inward under the pressure of politics. And until those exceptions are removed, Britain’s anti-racism architecture will remain a mirror of the inequalities it claims to fight.
The question now is whether Britain will dismantle the hierarchy, because if we don’t it will get worse and equality law will just end up as a mask we wear to disguise the racism we are choosing to live with.
And of course we’ve got a prime example of this on show right now as Keir Starmer’s government is seemingly still determined to try and accommodate Israeli football fans even though Israel themselves have just called off a match involving the club in question, Maccabi Tel Aviv, because the scenes of chaos they deemed too dangerous, even a threat to life. So get all the details of that story in this video recommendation here as your suggested next watch.
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