DAVID LAMMY’S mountain of moral bluster over the crisis in Gaza yielded just a mouse in terms of policy changes by the government.

The Foreign Secretary called the Netanyahu government’s conduct unacceptable and intolerable. He acknowledged that the use of starvation as a weapon of war “risks” breaching international law.

He denounced the planned ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from their homeland, as advocated by Israeli ministers. And he demanded an immediate ceasefire.

All this was in line with the statement issued on Monday by the British, French and Canadian governments, promising concrete actions if Israel continued on its murderous course.

But as to actually doing something concrete now? He suspended talks on a trade deal with the aggressor and called in far-right Israeli envoy to Britain Tzipi Livni for a stern dressing down.

To say that these moves do not measure up to the challenge of the moment is a monumental understatement.

Lammy claims that the British government cannot act “unilaterally,” citing the 1956 Suez crisis as the last gasp for such British initiatives in the Middle East.

Yet no-one is expecting direct military intervention in Gaza, even though it is worth noting that Britain’s armed assets in the region — naval forces in the Gulf, the RAF base in Cyprus — are being used in support of Israel’s actions, as Defence Minister Maria Eagle confirmed last week.

What the government could do, it does not. It could easily unilaterally recognise the state of Palestine, joining most of the world’s countries in so doing.

It could unilaterally halt all arms sales to Israel. It could stop the use of RAF Akrotiri to support Israeli operations.

It could apply wider sanctions on the Israeli economy. And it could sanction the overtly fascist ministers in Netanyahu’s government.

These measures would draw the widest support in the House of Commons, including among Tory MPs increasingly disowning their own die-hard Israel-backing front bench.

Until Lammy acts along these lines, his pumped up moralising rhetoric only serves to add the charge of hypocrisy to the formidable indictment of the government’s handling of the crisis.

Indeed, Lammy told MPs that it was time to call things by their proper name, and yet still refused to let the word “genocide” pass his lips.

Yet the growing pressure on him to act, pressure which the latest limited announcement will do nothing to abate, is not based on any assumptions regarding the Foreign Secretary’s moral compass.

Were he in possession of such an instrument British policy would have changed long ago.

The government is actually responding more to the continued pressure from the mass movement, expressed once again in the vast demonstration, around half a million strong, in London last weekend.

The sustained and militant character of the solidarity movement surely deserves much of the credit for such concessions as Starmer and Lammy have eventually made.

That pressure now needs to be redoubled as Netanyahu’s campaign of bombing, starvation and ethnic cleansing reaches its climax. Government policy is there for the taking — its indefensibility becomes daily more brazen. More than ever we must act for Palestine.

Pipe down

PETER TATCHELL should give it a rest. He is squandering the credit of a lifetime of brave campaigning for gay rights, above all, by his present posturing.

His intervention on the Palestine demonstration, equating killings by Hamas with Israel’s genocide and indeed giving greater prominence to the former, serves no purpose beyond sowing division and causing provocation.

Never one for subordinating his actions to the greater good of the movement, such ego-driven performances are exhausting everyone’s patience. Pick a side, Peter, or put a sock in it.