Why is Starmer’s ‘national security adviser’ and arch Blairite trying to avoid scrutiny?

Jonathan Powell served as former prime minister Tony Blair‘s chief of staff for ten years, and current Labour Party PM Keir Starmer has brought him back as his ‘national security advisor’. But Powell is controversially refusing parliamentary scrutiny, with government support.

Considering Powell’s role in “coordinating all UK foreign policy… issues from 10 Downing Street”, perhaps he doesn’t want to speak about Starmer’s genocide apologism, his support for the Israeli war criminals responsible, or his crackdown on free speech and peaceful protest on behalf of those criminals.

The purpose of the Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy (JCNSS) is to scrutinise the government government’s national security decisions. And it has reportedly asked for Powell’s attendance three times already, receiving no response despite all other advisors in his position having previously accepted such invitations. As Civil Service World asserts, government minister Pat McFadden has suggested the refusal is because Jonathan Powell is “a special adviser rather than a civil servant, unlike his predecessors”.

This is of concern in part due to recent revelations that the government has systemically sought – under both Conservative and Labour parties – to “suppress inconvenient truths” about the crimes of Israel and other allies.

Does the government think Jonathan Powell would show Starmer up?

The highly controversial lobby group Labour Friends of Israel appears to be particularly fond of some of Jonathan Powell’s record. However, it also seems that Powell may actually have a slightly more nuanced approach to bringing peace to the Middle East, based on his decades of negotiating experience. Because he said in 2021 that:

When I left Government in 2007, I said that on the basis of what I have learned in Northern Ireland, I thought we should be talking to groups like… Hamas, I was, not surprisingly, rubbished by my colleagues in the British government.

He probably says “not surprisingly” there because of the influence of the pro-Israel lobby in the Labour government at the time. But he explained his view, insisting that:

We have talked ourselves into a position where we won’t talk with Hamas, had we been in a situation where we wouldn’t talk with Sinn Fein, we wouldn’t have been able to get to a peace agreement here.

Jonathan Powell called it a “silly rule” to not engage, insisting “you need to speak to Hamas if you want to get to peace in the Middle East”.

This echoes what UN human rights expert Francesca Albanese has emphasised about the way subjective and politically-charged ‘terrorism’ designations undermine the prospects of peace. As she previously stressed: