Starmer faces pressure over Trump's 'riviera' Gaza plan

Fifty MPs ask PM to oppose president's 'ethnic cleansing'

- DAVID MADDOX, BEL TREW

Sir Keir Starmer is under growing pressure to challenge Donald Trump over his plans to turn Gaza into his latest real estate project.

Fifty Labour MPs wrote to him demanding he takes a stand against Mr Trump’s “ethnic cleansing” of Gaza, in the biggest public backlash within the party against the prime minister since Labour won the election.

Sir Keir attempted to avoid condemnation of the US president when he was confronted on the issue during Prime Minister’s Questions yesterday but Downing Street confirmed the PM planned to talk to the US president over the shock plans.

Asked whether it was accepted that the UK’s position is at odds with the US president’s suggestions that America could take ownership of the Gaza Strip, the prime minister’s official spokesperson said: “We will work with President Trump and his team on a wide range of issues, including the Middle East.”

However, the response has gone down badly in his own party as Labour MPs made their feelings known in a missive to the prime minister. The letter by 50 MPs led by Rosena Allin-Khan noted that the plans by Mr Trump to take over Gaza and move Palestinians elsewhere “amounts to ethnic cleansing”.

They went on: “The world intervened in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s and roundly condemned ethnic cleansing in Rwanda. We must meet these plans to remove millions of Palestinians from their homes, naked as they are, with the same robust response.