We need to talk about Luke Akehurst and Palestine Action

For a so-called workers’ party, (spoiler alert ... it isn't) Labour’s ranks have been stuffed to the brim with more careerist shits than a hedge fund’s HR department. From Blairite spin doctors to corporate lobbyists, from ex-police to arms industry cheerleaders, and so called leftists who happily and greedily take a gong and a title, the party has long served as a revolving door for those who see the working class as a branding exercise rather than a cause.  But even among this rogues’ gallery of grifters, one name stands out for his sheer vindictiveness, his cold, managerial contempt for democracy, his rabid Zionism and his obsessive crusade against anything remotely socialist:  standing atop this steaming pile of bureaucratic careerism is one man who has made smearing anti-racists, criminalising solidarity, and defending apartheid his life’s work. Let me introduce you to the self-declared Zionist shitlord, Luke Akehurst.

Luke Akehurst has been at the centre of multiple high-profile controversies: ranging from provocative self-labelling and deleted social media histories, to serious remarks about Israel, anti-Palestinian conspiracy theories, and accusations of hypocrisy within Labour's factional politics.

A Labour NEC member, longtime Israel lobbyist, and professional smear-merchant. Akehurst has spent the better part of two decades purging the Left, redefining solidarity as extremism, and turning Labour into a cleansed, pro-imperialist shell of its former self.  And this proscription of Palestine Action, quite frankly has his MO wrtten all over it. 

Akehurst is now an MP for North Durham.  An area he had very little idea about before he stood.  He was parachuted in from Central Office much to the disgust of the local PLP, some of whom reigned in protest.  Many members and voters see him as an imposed outsider, lacking real roots in the constituency.  His initial meetings reportedly went poorly, with accusations of avoidance, imposition, and disrespect toward local concerns.

As a constituency MP while Luke Akehurst is ticking boxes in terms of box standard MP duties, although to be fair, like all MP's, his staffers will do most of the donkey work.  His selection process and early relations with the local party have left a lasting bad taste among North Durham Labour activists. The constituency's early instincts indicate deep mistrust, and a demand that he prove his commitment beyond political optics.  Something it is unlikely they will see. 

The McCarthyism of modern Zionism

On the 24th of June 2025, the Labour government announced it would proscribe Palestine Action under terrorism legislation, making membership or support for the group punishable by law.  The justification? A paint attack on an RAF Brize Norton plane linked to British military assistance to Israel during its war on Gaza. That’s right: no bombs, no guns, no deaths: just symbolic, nonviolent direct action.  And yet it’s been met with the full force of Britain’s counter-terror apparatus.  You don’t need to dig far to see who’s been greasing the wheels of this authoritarian absurdity.  

Let’s be clear: Palestine Action are not terrorists They have never harmed anyone. Their actions: disrupting Elbit Systems sites, daubing drones with paint, and blockading arms factories, are part of a long tradition of civil disobedience in Britain. But because they’ve been successful: forcing Elbit to quit two UK sites and shining a light on Britain’s military complicity in Israel’s assault on Gaza, they’ve drawn blood.  And the lobby has responded.  According to The Guardian, the Home Office cited vague baseless concerns about 'Iranian influence' when proposing the ban, parroting bullshit language long circulated by We Believe in Israel (WBII) the pro-Israel outfit founded and run by Akehurst until 2024.  Though no evidence was presented, this 'foreign agent' smear echoed years of tactics used to paint anti-Zionist activism as inherently subversive, antisemitic and dangerous.  

^{A march in support of Palestine Action on Monday}

Palestine Action swiftly denied the accusations. “We’ve never had a penny from Iran” one spokesperson told the FT, noting that their funding is grassroots and their methods transparent.  But the damage is done: the accusation alone, circulated through government briefings and the right-wing press, was enough to prepare the ground for a ban.    

And this is how the the Israel lobby works and people working with them like Akehurst operate:  they lie, they gaslight and they throw baseless accusations around wrapped up as fact, unchallenged by the media.  Then anyone who calls it out is branded an antisemite.  Akehurst, who isn't himself Jewish, once famously tried to mansplain Judaism to Jewish Voice for Labour, who put him right in his place.  If anything underlines what a tool he is, it's this.

An Al Jazeera documentary, The Lobby, revealed former Israeli embassy official who bankrolled the campaign against Corbyn, Shai Masot calling Akehurst “one of the best on the inside” in Labour.  The footage suggested he attended pro-Israel briefings and covertly collected info at Labour Friends of Palestine events reddit.com+15declassifieduk.org+15jewishvoiceforlabour.org.uk+15.

The method  

To understand the machinery behind this smear, you have to look at how Akehurst’s power operates:

WBII officially split off from BICOM in 2022 but continues to share ideological infrastructure. In a 2024 Novara investigation, Akehurst’s back-channel influence in Labour selections and policy briefings was laid bare, particularly regarding Palestine and the suppression of left-wing Jewish groups.

Once Palestine Action ramped up their targeting of RAF and Elbit facilities, Akehurst took the campaign into Parliament.  He raised official questions in the House of Commons. He spoke publicly about 'foreign interference'.  He met with journalists and ministers.  And lo and behold, by 2025, a formal terrorism proscription had entered Labour’s legislative pipeline.  In that same Guardian article above, human rights groups and protest lawyers described the move as 'chilling'  not just because of what it does to Palestine Action, but because of the precedent it sets for all protest.  Direct action, once a proud tradition in this country, is now being rebranded as terrorism if it disrupts the arms trade: especially when those arms are headed to Israel.  

As for the activities of Palestine Action being illegal - well let's look at that.  The whole point of carrying out direct action against injustice is that it inevitably falls outside of the law because the law itself is flawed or the Government is acting outside of the law.  Palestine Action would not be targeting Elbit or the RAF if they weren't complicit in a Genocide - and the only way to shine a light on this complicity was to break the law.  Just like the Greenham Common women did, the Suffragettes subject to the Cat and Mouse Act and the gay activists in the 1960's.  It's telling that Akehurst has his paws into this and the so called Board of Deputies of British Jews, themselves and Israel advocacy group, is also involved in pushing this.  The question has to be asked when our Government is clearly complicit in a Genocide and shows no slowing in its support for Israel - who exactly are they working for? This is why Palestine Action are on the right side of history and our Government very much isn't. 

Why Akehurst

Akehurst is no mere ideologue, he’s a technocrat of repression, a civil servant of apartheid.  A self-titled Zionist Shitlord.  He doesn’t shout about Israel’s military power.  He doesn't need to.  He rewrites party rules, plants talking points in the mouths of MPs, and stirs bureaucratic sabotage from inside Labour's administrative entrails.  He's cut from the same cloth as that POS Peter Mandelson and operates in a similar fashion.  He was central to pushing the IHRA 'definition' of antisemitism that conflates anti-Zionism with racism.  Something that even its original author, Kenneth Stern complaine about when he saw it being weaponised.  He helped destroy Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership using weaponised allegations, and he’s now central to building Starmer’s sanitised, pro-Israel Labour machine.  He provides plausible deniability for an ideological purge that has expelled Jews, Muslims, Christians, and atheists alike, anyone who dares raise a Palestinian flag, question a genocide or quote the UN Charter.  

This is not just about Palestine.  This is about what kind of country Britain wants to be.  Criminalising protest against war crimes is a sign of deep moral decay.  And when that criminalisation is driven not by public demand but by a well-funded lobbyists with a PR background, we are no longer a democracy, we are a client state.  Starmer’s Labour, drunk on donor cash and obsessed with 'security' has become the willing enforcer of this crackdown.  It has learned to mimic the language of Zionist fear-mongering, complete with Iranian bogeymen, 'co-ordinated networks' and 'domestic threats'.  And at the heart of it all sits Luke Akehurst, a petty bureaucrat with a poisonous mandate: destroy the Left, defend Israel, and crush dissent.

^{Shai Masot, formerlt of the Israeli Embassy, who according to the Lobby, use Israeli money to destablish the Corbyn leadership.  "Luke is our best man on the inside"}  

The real threat to Britain isn’t Palestine Action:  it’s the corruption of democratic institutions by people like Luke Akehurst.  It’s the rebranding of solidarity as sedition, the criminalisation of truth-telling, and the silent erasure of the Palestinian cause from political discourse.  Every time Elbit ships a drone, every time a Labour MP mouths Akehurst’s lines about 'national security' every time a protestor is arrested, Luke Akehurst has done his job. And he does it well: for Tel Aviv, not for London, for the arms dealers, for the donors.  Not for you and I and certainly not for the people of North Durham where he was parachuted in as MP against the wishes of the local party.

One last thing.  Akehurst is one of the worst examples of this Genocide support ing pro Israel faction in the Labour Party.  It's not before time that Labour Friends of Israel, and for that matter Conservative Friends of Israel, need to be called out for what they are:  an Israeli fifth column in British Politics funded heavily by a third Party state indicted for genocide.  And Israel is not doing this for charity, it expects a return and we are seeing, in the silence and complicity, what that return is. 

With Luke Akehurst we know the answer - but you if your MP is funded by the Israel lobby, is a member of LFI or CFI then you need to ask them a question:  who exactly are you representing in Westminster, your constituents ... the ones that you into power? or Likud.  We have a word in Britain for people who work against the interests of our country on behalf on another one.  They used to hang you for it. 

References and further reading

• “UK protest group Palestine Action denies Iran funding,” The Guardian, 24 June 2025: Link
• “Ban on Palestine Action would have chilling effect,” The Guardian, 23 June 2025: Link
• “Pro-Palestinian activist group to be proscribed after RAF base break-in,” Financial Times, 21 June 2025: Link
• Novara Media, “The Zionist Behind Labour’s Purge,” 2024: [novaramedia.com]
• BICOM & WBII Financial Disclosures: Companies House UK
• Parliamentary Questions: Hansard Archive (Luke Akehurst MP)

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