THE gap between the foreign policy stance of Keir Starmer’s Establishment Labour Party and the increasingly settled view of a growing majority of British people that a ceasefire in Palestine is the most urgent priority was underlined over the weekend by a widespread pattern of local protests in communities up and down the country.

The protests have acquired a rhythm — with national protests alternating with regional and local demonstrations — that is firmly rooting a new realism in the minds of millions.

People have come to this common position from different standpoints. The most compelling and the most widely shared is simple human solidarity with the victims of this conflict.

This is strengthened by a growing cohort of national opinion that sees these conflicts as rooted in the imperialist drive for resources, energy and profit.

This is now transmuted into a growing movement of solidarity with the Palestinian demand for a sovereign state of their own on land that for millennia has been theirs.

A key element of imperialism’s regional strategy has been the US and British alliance with Saudi Arabia and the interlocking alliances with other, no less despotic regimes in the region.

The other leg of imperialism’s strategy is its alliance with Israel which is expressed as an extreme tolerance for any action by the zionist state even when hedged around with pious if powerless protestation in favour of a two-state solution.

It is becoming increasingly evident that neither of these positions can endure.

The Yemeni interdiction of shipping belonging to Israel’s allies and which is suspected of serving Israel ensures that the political support for Israel now comes at an economic cost.

The Red Sea, which the Houthis command, leads to the Suez Canal and handles 15 per cent of the world’s shipping traffic and a slice of all global container trade.

US Secretary of State Blinken’s frantic shuttle diplomacy has the now forlorn aim of containing the growing crisis to Gaza. His expectation that the Saudis might act to pressure the Yemenis to call off their solidarity actions with the Palestinians and resolve the shipping crisis has foundered on the new global realities.

The Saudi Foreign Ministry’s response to British and US strikes against Yemeni positions was to express its “great concern” and call for “self-restraint” to avoid an escalation.

Saudi self-interest now lies in regional co-operation with its neighbours in order to diversify its economy away from its sole reliance on oil. The last thing it wants is the resumption of conflict with Yemen. Neither does it want to breach its Chinese-brokered rapprochement with Iran.

China’s diplomatic intervention to broker a deal to end the decade-long Saudi assault on the Houthis and the Saudi recognition that their interests lie no longer in an unquestioning alliance with imperialism, coupled with the Saudi’s clear-sighted sense that there is no profit or advantage in resuming a conflict with their Yemeni neighbours, underlines Blinken’s failure.

His job, to give form and substance to Biden’s failing strategy, means he must go back to Washington with the outlines of a new approach.

Hence the reappearance in official circles and the bourgeois media of discussion about a two-state solution.

The growing consensus that Starmer’s foreign policy mouthpiece, the hapless David Lammy, is neither use nor ornament is strengthened by his complete failure to reflect the popular mood.

One way in which Labour could claw back some moral credibility is for it to combine a demand for a ceasefire with practical pressure to make the establishment of a sovereign Palestinian state — and include this in its election manifesto.