What was claimed
Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni criticised Sir Keir Starmer as “cringe” over Britain’s role in the Gaza ceasefire agreement and said “if anything he harmed peace negotiations”.
Our verdict
We can find no evidence Ms Meloni ever said this. A spokesperson for the Italian embassy in London confirmed she did not make the comments.
Viral posts on social media claim that Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said Sir Keir Starmer “harmed” Gaza peace negotiations.
While there are variations of the supposed quote, many of these posts go on to claim that Ms Meloni said Mr Starmer played “no part” in the deal, and that he should “sort out his own country”.
But we can find no evidence Ms Meloni said this, and a spokesperson for the Italian embassy in London confirmed to Full Fact that these are not genuine comments from the Italian premier.
Some of these posts, which have been viewed more than a million times across X and Facebook, claim Ms Meloni said: “If anything he harmed peace negotiations, trying to impose his master Tony Blair on Palestinians. Now he wants to get a photo op and claim he helped.”
There is no evidence of any such quote being reported by any reputable news sources from the past month.
Mr Starmer, Ms Meloni and other world leaders travelled to Egypt this week to finalise the agreement on ending the conflict between Israel and Hamas after a ceasefire took effect on 10 October.
There are further clues that the supposed quotation is not real. A search for articles from major Italian news outlets, such as Corriere Della Sera and La Repubblica, which might be expected to report on such a statement, also do not show any reports substantiating the quotation.
Any such remarks would also contrast with Ms Meloni’s description of her relations with Mr Starmer as “very good” as recently as January this year.
The unevidenced quote being shared on social media references Mr Blair’s potential role on a ‘Board of Peace’ to oversee the administration of Gaza, part of Donald Trump’s 20 point plan for peace—which was unveiled by the White House on 29 September.
We often see quotations attributed to politicians without a credible source. Misinformation can spread quickly and has the potential to harm individuals, groups and democratic processes and institutions.
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 there is no evidence that Giorgia Meloni made these comments about Keir Starmer and Britain’s efforts in the Gaza ceasefire deal.
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