Labour has been urged to expel a firebrand MP for continuing to back the protest organisation that is being prohibited as an illegal terrorist organisation.
Zarah Sultana posted on X that ‘we are all Palestine Action’ after the Home Office said it would proscribe the group behind the attack on RAF jets at Brize Norton.
The 31-year-old Corbynista politician – who then reposted MailOnline’s article about her comments this morning and repeated the claim – was suspended as a Labour MP after voting against the Government but is understood to remain a party member.
Former adviser on political violence Lord Walney told the Daily Mail: ‘An MP expressing defiant support for an organisation about to be proscribed as terrorists in the UK is incredibly serious.
‘Ms Sultana is still bound by the Labour Party’s code of conduct, even while she is suspended, so it is about time the party formally expels her, particularly given Palestine Action’s record of violence and intimidation of workers.’
The MP for Coventry South now sits as an Independent following her suspension from Labour after she voted to back scrapping the two-child benefit cap.
In recent days Birmingham-born Ms Sultana has attended pro-Palestine events, including a gathering in Madrid on Monday called ‘Stop Genocide! Free Palestine’.
She also addressed a crowd following a march in London organised by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign from Russell Square to Whitehall last Saturday – and spoke out against the ban on Palestine Action while appearing on BBC TV the next morning.
But Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp said: ‘Palestine Action use violence, intimidation, and criminal damage to try to achieve their political aims.
‘That is not how we do things in this country. We debate issues and we vote in elections to decide issues – we don’t use violence.
‘These MPs who support PA’s violent methods are advocating mob rule and should hang their heads in shame. Just because you disagree with someone doesn’t give you the right to smash up their property. Mob rule has no place in a civilised country.’
Labour MP David Taylor, for Hemel Hempstead, told the Jewish Chronicle that Ms Sultana should have her membership of the party rescinded.
He said: ‘Zarah Sultana is not a Labour MP. I am not aware of any plans to change this. The whips and party are best placed to oversee any change to this fact.
‘As a backbench MP, it is my view that Ms Sultana embodies the very worst of politics. If it were up to me her party membership card would be rescinded.’
Another Labour MP, Neil Coyle, told the publication: ‘We are proscribing Palestine Action, so she is clearly seeking attention and not seeking the return of the whip.’
Ms Sultana has opposed moves to proscribe Palestine Action, speaking against the plans while appearing on the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg last weekend.
She said on the programme: ‘What I’m worried about is what the Government is announcing around proscribing Palestine Action. What happened at that RAF base was two aircraft vehicles being damaged. No single life harmed. No one injured.’
Ms Sultana added: ‘What activists, protesters, politicians like myself have been trying to highlight is UK complicity through surveillance, through selling of arms and what we see with proscribing a group is a dangerous escalation in terms of the crackdown on the right to protest.’
Other left-wing Labour MPs have claimed the plan to proscribe Palestine Action was an attack on the right to protest.
Diane Abbott said: ‘The government seems confused between protest and terrorism. To clarify, what Israel is doing is terrorism. What Palestine Action is doing is protesting it.’
Richard Burgon said: ‘There’s a long tradition in our country of people using non-violent direct action to oppose war – like the women at the Greenham Common base. But even those opposed to such tactics should see that proscribing Palestine Action – treating them as terrorists – is a dangerous step.’
Kim Johnson said: ‘Palestine Action targets property, not lives. This is a dangerous attack on civil liberties. We must defend the right to protest.’
Under the ban, membership and support for Palestine Action will be made illegal and carry a punishment of up to 14 years in jail.
The group has already raised £10,000 towards a legal challenge against the ‘draconian attack’.
A Labour source told the Mail: ‘These people are simply proving they’re not serious about national security.’
And in response to Ms Sultana’s claim that ‘we are all Palestine Action’, Labour MP Mike Tapp replied: ‘No we are not!’
Speaking in May, Ms Sultana accused Sir Keir Starmer’s Government of being ‘complicit’ in a ‘campaign of collective punishment waged with impunity’.
She told Al Jazeera at the time: ‘Families have been obliterated, entire neighbourhoods reduced to rubble, and essential services like food, water and electricity deliberately targeted.
‘This is not a tragic accident of war. It is the predictable result of a campaign of collective punishment waged with impunity … The UK’s failure to act is not just a moral disgrace – it is a political choice.’
MailOnline has contacted Ms Sultana’s office for comment today.
The row comes as new polling shows that one in three Britons supports the ban on the group.
A survey by More in Common found that 35 per cent agree with Home Secretary Yvette Cooper’s decision while 23 per cent oppose it.
The Home Office is also investigating whether Iran is funding Palestine Action, with officials understood to be probing the group’s source of donations amid concerns it is not bound by financial transparency rules.
There are fears Iran could be providing money, via proxies, given their objectives of ‘dismantling the apartheid regime in Israel’ are aligned.
Yesterday, seven people were charged after protesters clashed with police at a demonstration in support of Palestine Action on Monday.
Officers made 13 arrests for offences including assaulting an emergency worker, obstructing a constable and breaching Public Order Act conditions, the Metropolitan Police said.
Of the others arrested at the Trafalgar Square march, one has been cautioned and the remainder either bailed or released under investigation, the force added.
The protest had initially been planned to take place outside the Houses of Parliament, but the location was changed early on Monday morning when Scotland Yard imposed an exclusion zone.
Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said in a statement on Monday afternoon that she has decided to proscribe Palestine Action and will lay an order before Parliament next week which, if passed, will make membership and support for the protest group illegal.
The decision comes after the group posted footage online showing two people inside the base at RAF Brize Norton in Oxfordshire.
The clip shows one person riding an electric scooter up to an Airbus Voyager air-to-air refuelling tanker and appearing to spray paint into its jet engine.
Ms Sultana also hit the headlines earlier this month for lobbying for the Fire Brigades Union in Parliament while failing to declare her marriage to one of its senior policy officers.
She married the FBU’s Craig Lloyd last August – and then went on to speak up for key FBU demands in the Commons, including calling for more funding for fire services.
In the months leading up to the wedding, when the pair were living together in London, Ms Sultana accepted a £10,000 donation from the union for her re-election campaign.
Both before and after the wedding she has also been the chair of the FBU’s Parliamentary Group, the union’s political campaign team.
Under the parliamentary code of conduct, MPs are meant to declare anything that could be seen to influence them as well as declaring any family members involved in lobbying the Government.
Approached for comment by The Mail On Sunday, which revealed the story, Ms Sultana launched an astonishing attack on the Labour Party, making unsubstantiated and false claims that it was ‘a smear from the Labour right’ and that it was revenge for her remarks linking Peter Mandelson to Jeffrey Epstein.
She did not respond to repeated questions of whether she should have declared the relationship.
