DECISION-TIME looms for Sir Keir Starmer as Scottish Labour united at the weekend to call for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza.

As they have done since the Israeli invasion began, those fighting for peace and justice for the people of Palestine gathered in Glasgow’s George Square on Saturday, but this week some 7,000 took their rally to the doorstep of the city’s Scotland Event Campus as Scottish Labour faced the debate.

Leader Anas Sarwar had earlier told the conference of his concerns about a further escalation in the conflict, condemning “the offensive threatened on Rafah, a place where one-and-a-half million people are now cramped together in unimaginable conditions with nowhere else to go.

“This cannot become a new theatre of war. That offensive cannot happen.

“Even in these most terrible of circumstances, a two-state solution must be back on the table.”

In the hour it took for protesters to reach the hall, the decision had been made and Scottish Labour unanimously endorsed its leader Mr Sarwar’s calls for hostilities to cease. 

After Labour had pointedly refused to back an SNP ceasefire motion in the House of Commons in November, the calls have not only left the party’s two Scottish MPs with a decision to make, but its Westminster leader too, and in short order.

In a vote due to take place on Wednesday, Labour MPs will once again be presented the opportunity to back an SNP motion demanding an end to the slaughter, but the party has remained elusive on its plans.

Speaking on the BBC’s Sunday Show, Mr Sarwar suggested a coming together may be in the offing, saying: “I know our whips have already made contact with the SNP whips to say look, we ultimately both want the same thing.

“We both want the violence to stop right now and we both want the release of hostages, we both want immediate access to humanitarian aid. We both want that two-state solution.”

Denying any contact had taken place, the SNP’s Westminster leader Stephen Flynn offered Sir Keir a meeting today to find a way forward, writing to him: “In the absence of contact from any of your Labour Party colleagues, I am now writing to make clear that I am of course willing to have such a discussion.

“Given the importance of this issue — literally a discussion on life and death — the very least the public would expect is that the leaders of the SNP and the Labour Party at Westminster can sit down and have a discussion on this ceasefire motion.”

In his speech closing the Scottish Labour conference, Sir Keir chose not to refer to any possible talks with the SNP, but appeared to distance himself from his earlier calls for “humanitarian pauses,” instead following the footsteps of world leaders whose initial backing for the Israeli offensive is on the wane.

Sir Keir said: “I have just returned from the Munich Security Conference where every conversation I had came back to the situation in Israel and Gaza and the question of what we can do practically to deliver what we all want to see — a return of all the hostages taken on October 7, an end to the killing of innocent Palestinians, a huge scaling up of humanitarian relief and an end to the fighting.