Keir Starmer’s Government Is Leaving the Hunger Strikers to Die

By the standards of even the most forgiving and lenient Santa, it can’t be said that Keir Starmer’s government has been good this year. 

We’ve seen a manifesto-breaching budget that was leaked ahead of time, embarrassing U-turns on scrapping the two-child benefit cap, welfare reform and cutting pensioners’ winter fuel payments, and bursts of vicious briefing and leadership plot speculation amid Labour’s increasingly dire polling figures. 

Then there were the Tommy Robinson-approved plans for asylum seekers, support for Israeli football hooligans’ right to rampage through Birmingham and yet more cabinet cowardice over Israel’s continuous campaign of ethnic cleansing in Gaza. 

And if this wasn’t enough to warrant a lump of coal in the government’s stocking on Christmas morning, 2025 also saw Starmer’s weaponisation of anti-terror law in the form of the proscription of Palestine Action, ie protecting UK sites of Israel’s largest arms manufacturer while nanas in their 80s get carried off by cops.

With parliament’s Christmas hiatus beckoning, there’s one shameful chapter left wide open: the six hunger-striking prisoners, who become more likely to sustain irreversible physical damage or die with every hour of government inaction. 

At least two of the detainees, held in connection to Palestine Action activism, have now surpassed day 48 of refusing food. Day 46 was the point at which one of the 23 participants in the Irish republican hunger strike of 1981 died as part of the struggle against Britain’s colonial occupation of Ireland. 

But Starmer and his cabinet seem to have nothing to say. 

When challenged by Jeremy Corbyn to commit to meeting representatives of the hunger strikers in the Commons on Wednesday, the prime minister replied that he is following the ‘rules and procedures’ in place. 

These ‘rules and procedures’ seem unlikely to safeguard the lives of those who remain on hunger strike: Amu Gibb (Amy Gardiner-Gibson), Qesser Zuhrah, Heba Muraisi, Teuta ‘T’ Hoxha, Kamran Ahmed and Lewie Chiaramello.

Zuhrah, Muraisi, Hoxha and Ahmed are part of the ‘Filton 24’, held in connection with a break-in at an Elbit Systems weapons factory, while Gibb and Chiaramello are held in connection with damage to aircraft at RAF Brize Norton, where planes were splashed with red paint. 

Zuhrah, who has refused food since 2 November, saw her health deteriorate severely this week, experiencing severe chest pain, the inability to stand and repeated loss of consciousness. She was taken to hospital on Wednesday from HMP Bronzefield after hours of protest outside the privately-run prison. 

Campaign group Prisoners For Palestine (PFP) said they had repeatedly attempted to call an ambulance for Zuhrah over a period of 19 hours, but were informed by 999 call handlers that the emergency vehicle would just be turned away by the prison.  

Solicitors representing the hunger strikers warned this week that without justice secretary David Lammy’s intervention, their clients will die, while Shahmina Alam, who is Ahmed’s sister, said the government is endangering inmates’ lives and described policing and the prison and justice systems as “corrupt”. Lammy has so far refused to meet with family members.

The hunger strikers’ demands are for a fair trial, the shuttering of all Elbit sites in the UK, and immediate bail – all have already been held in excess of the custody time limit of 182 days. 

Sniggering from MPs in the Commons, right-wing commentators and social media users posting “eat a sandwich” sneers betrays their blindness to the historic use of hunger strikes in political struggle – from India and Ireland to occupied Palestine – and the reputational stains on those who turn a deaf ear. 

With more than 70,000 Palestinians killed in Israel’s genocide – and with the lives of six people who opposed this hanging in the balance – the government’s commitment to safeguarding the operations of Israel’s largest arms company on British soil feels increasingly grotesque.