Labour Grassroots Aim to Force Gaza Onto the Conference Floor as Burnham Faces His First Test as Prime Minister
A coalition of grassroots Labour groups is preparing to push the issue of Gaza onto the conference floor at Andy Burnham's first Labour party conference as prime minister next month. They are circulating a model motion — a template resolution that local party branches can adopt — demanding that the government recognise Israel's actions in Gaza as genocide and impose a complete arms embargo (a ban on selling or transferring weapons).
Momentum, Labour & Palestine, the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy, and the Palestine Solidarity Campaign are coordinating the effort. Their model motion, now circulating among constituency parties, calls on the government to accept a UN commission of inquiry finding that Israel has committed genocide in Gaza. It also demands "comprehensive sanctions," including a ban on trade that "aids or assists" Israel's military actions in Gaza or its unlawful presence in the occupied Palestinian territories — covering trade with Israeli settlements. (The Guardian, 23 August 2026)
The groups are framing the push as an early test of Burnham's promise not to "stifle debate" within the party. Momentum is launching a petition targeting both current and former Labour members and voters to build pressure ahead of the Liverpool conference. Separately, the Palestine Coalition has called a national march to the conference on 26 September 2026, starting at St George's Plateau at noon, under the banner "Tell Andy Burnham Stop Arming Israel." (CND UK / Palestine Coalition, 18 August 2026)
The campaign builds on a precedent Burnham's predecessors tried to contain. At the 2025 Labour conference, delegates defied the then-leadership and backed an emergency motion proposed by Unite (one of the UK's largest trade unions) urging the government to "employ all means reasonably available to it to prevent the commission of genocide in Gaza" and to "fully suspend the arms trade with Israel and the UK-Israel trade and partnership agreement." (The Guardian, 29 September 2025) The vote followed an effort by party officials to rule Palestine motions out of order; roughly 30 submitted by local parties were struck from the agenda. During the conference's Gaza debate, no speaker beyond the union delegates who proposed and seconded the motion was called to speak in support of it.
Burnham has shifted the party's rhetorical posture on Gaza since becoming leader. He apologised for Labour's handling of the crisis under Keir Starmer, saying the party had "not got it right." Before becoming prime minister, he told The Guardian the UK was "too slow to call for a ceasefire" and that more needed to be done. He stopped short of using the term genocide, however, citing "increasing evidence" of war crimes while deferring to international courts for any such ruling. (The Guardian, 23 August 2026)
Several Labour MPs have told The Guardian they welcomed Burnham's apology but want him to go further and explicitly "acknowledge Israel's actions in Gaza as a genocide." The gap between that demand and Burnham's public position is the space the grassroots motion aims to exploit.
On the government front, Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband has said ministers will set out a "comprehensive set of measures" against Israel following its advancement of the E1 settlement plans in the occupied West Bank. That announcement pre-dates but intersects with the conference motion's demand for sanctions covering settlement trade.
The trajectory has been building for over a year. Momentum's recommended model motions for the 2024 conference cycle called for Palestinians in Gaza to be protected from acts of genocide and for a full arms embargo until Israel complies with international law. (Momentum, 2024) By October 2025, Momentum's newsletter "The Organiser" reported the conference vote as a victory on genocide recognition, arms embargo, and further sanctions. (Momentum, October 2025) In June 2026, pro-Palestine activists told The Guardian they sensed a "sea change" in Labour's approach to Israel, with members pressing for a total ban on arms shipments. (The Guardian, 12 June 2026) The Palestine Solidarity Campaign protested outside Congress House in July to deliver the same demands directly to the newly elected leader. (PSC, 24 July 2026)
The broader context here is a test of how Burnham handles the tension between his stated openness to internal debate and the procedural habits of party management. The dynamics at Liverpool will show whether that openness translates into allowing contested motions on the floor, or whether his conference managers revert to the filtering seen in 2025. The model motion's breadth — coupling genocide recognition with sanctions on settlement trade and a full arms embargo — goes well beyond the government's current path of signalling measures tied to specific settlement expansion decisions. Whether that gap narrows or widens next month will be an early signal of how the Burnham premiership manages the party's internal Israel-Palestine coalition at a moment when grassroots expectations are at their highest.
