Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has announced that the UK will be boycotting diplomatic relations with Israel.
This has not been announced by Mr Starmer or the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office. Mr Starmer has said the UK “stands with Israel” and supports “diplomatic efforts” in the region.
A post on X, formerly Twitter, on 6 October, claims: “BREAKING NEWS UK PM Keir Starmer says that UK will boycott all diplomatic relations with Israel due to its long lasting war in Gaza,” alongside a photo of Mr Starmer speaking at a podium. It has more than 2,800 shares and some Facebook posts make the same claim. But this is false.
Mr Starmer has not said this, and no such announcement has been made by the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO), the British Embassy in Tel Aviv or the Israeli Embassy in London.
The British Ambassador to Israel Simon Walters and an Israeli Ambassador to the UK Tzipi Hotovely are both still in position.
In response to Iran’s missile attack on Israel on 2 October, Mr Starmer said: “We stand with Israel and we recognise her right to self defence in the face of this aggression.”
The UK government released a joint statement with the EU, and the governments of the US, France, and several other countries, on 26 September 2024 calling for “an immediate 21 day ceasefire across the Lebanon-Israel border”, and if that went ahead it said they’d “fully support all diplomatic efforts to conclude an agreement between Lebanon and Israel within this period, building on efforts over the last months, that ends this crisis altogether”.
The photo of Mr Starmer being shared with the posts shows him during his first press conference as UK prime minister on 6 July 2024, in which he did not mention diplomatic relations with Israel.
Full Fact has contacted the FCDO for comment, and will update this article if we receive a response.
You can find more of our work debunking claims relating to the Middle East on our website.
This article is part of our work fact checking potentially false pictures, videos and stories on Facebook. You can read more about this—and find out how to report Facebook content—here. For the purposes of that scheme, we’ve rated this claim as false because this has not been announced by the Prime Minister or the FCDO, and the UK still has an ambassador to Israel and vice versa.
Full Fact fights for good, reliable information in the media, online, and in politics.
Bad information ruins lives. It promotes hate, damages people’s health, and hurts democracy. You deserve better.