Britain’s security minister, Lord West, just dropped a bombshell by declaring his nation’s military intervention in Iraq and Afghanistan had fuelled global radicalism against Britain and the U.S.

West described as “bollocks” former PM Tony Blair’s claims the so-called “war on terror” had nothing to do with growing Islamic radicalism. This comes soon after Britain’s foreign secretary, David Miliband, called the term “war on terror,” deceptive and damaging.

http://www.torontosun.com/comment/columnists/eric_margolis/2009/02/01/8221436-sun.html

Yes, perhaps issues such as Palestine are rising in importance for the younger Muslim generation. But most Muslims in the UK are from Pakistan and that too from certain parts of Pakistan such as Mirpur district. Many come from rural backgrounds and their concerns from my experience revolve more around events in South Asia rather than the Middle East. Although they feel a solidarity with Palestinians as Muslims; it has been more recent globalised issues that have politicised them – the war in Iraq has been far more powerful in radicalising the Muslim population than Palestine or Israeli actions have been as British intelligence agencies have noted.

On the ‘lobby’ and its existence I am sceptical as to how powerful it actually is a force. True British foreign policy did support Zionism but this was for other reasons as well and British policy certainly also had a strong pro-Arabist element to it as well from the 1920s onwards. Key parts of the British state such as the Foreign Office were and remain to this day quite antagonistic towards Zionism. One of the checks has been the fact that most of the British statesmen like Balfour and Churchill who supported Zionism were bascially anti-Semites themselves and disliked Jews as a community in Europe – they were very keen for them to be shipped off to far-off places like Palestine where they wouldn’t cause any trouble in the homeland.

America is slightly different but again the so-called lobby was very weak and unable to influence American policy when Israel was really vulnerable as in the 1950s and early 60s.

You are probably underestimating the identification of Ango-Pakistani identification with Palestinians as well as the increasing political nationalist pan-Islamic consciousness among British Muslims and the world Muslim population in general.

While British Zionists have not had the vast public organizational structure of the American Israel Lobby, the wealthiest British Zionists (Zionist political economic oligarchs) have managed at critical periods to exert tremendous influence over the British government. See Judonia, Balfour Declaration and Afterward.

I don’t agree though, that the presence of a ‘lobby’ has any real impact on British foreign policy, unless it is a corporate or economic one. There are also barely 2 million (if that) Muslims in Britain according to the 2001 census, so your figure of 6 million Pakistani-Brits is wide of the mark. I doubt for many Hurndall’s case would have been very prominent, since Kashmir is more of a concern for this group than Palestine.

There are some exceptions such as Brown’s attitude towards Africa and his views on debt relief. In all though, the govt will be quite Blairite on most key questions, imo anyway.