Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Breaking News

Jewish Donors Desert Britain’s Labor Party After ‘Palestine’ Vote

Jewish donors and supporters are deserting Britain’s Labor party over party leader Ed Miliband’s perceived pro-Palestinian stance.

Miliband has been warned of the loss of Jewish support, the U.K. Independent reported Sunday.

Miliband, the son of Holocaust refugees, last month ordered all party lawmakers to vote in favor of a nonbinding motion to recognize the state of Palestine.

The party reportedly also is having problem raising funds for next year’s elections.

Donations from the Jewish community in the past have been worth hundreds of thousands of pounds a year to the Labor Party, according to the newspaper, which reported that several previous supporters said that they and others are now very unlikely to support the party.

Last week, popular British actress Maureen Lipman announced that she would stop supporting the party after 50 years. Miliband publicly and strongly criticized Israel for its 50-day operation in Gaza last summer.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse..

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.