This week, the British government banned Hasan Piker and Cenk Uygur, two leftwing US commentators with millions of followers, from entering the country on the grounds that their presence would not be “conducive to the public good”. It did not spell out what it meant by this very broad phrase, but Piker and Uygur have accused the government of denying them entry because of their prolific criticism of Israel. Some critics have accused the pair of antisemitism, which they deny.

Neither Piker nor Uygur have said anything that is more divisive or dangerous than former Israeli president Isaac Herzog’s declaration that all Palestinians were responsible for the Hamas attack on 7 October 2023. A UN commission of inquiry found that Herzog incited the commission of genocide with this statement and said that his later modifications of that utterance were an effort “to deflect responsibility for the initial statement”. Still, the British seem fine with that first statement: Herzog met with Keir Starmer in London in 2025. Clearly that meeting was deemed to be conducive to the public good.

Wherever you live, whatever you believe, wherever you sit on the political spectrum, most of us have a shared understanding of basic moral concepts, of what is good and what is bad. We understand that children are innocent and should not be killed in the thousands. We understand that a region’s healthcare system should not be systematically wiped out and medics targeted. We understand that there should be laws around warfare to protect civilians. We understand that people should not be expelled en masse from their land, their homes replaced with luxury settlements. We understand that collective punishment is a crime, one that is very much not “conducive to the public good”.

When you stop someone from entering your country because you deem that they are not “conducive to the public good”, then I think it’s important to spell out exactly what you mean by “good”. The British government has declined to do that directly. But what has become very clear, over the last couple of years, is that the UK and US have deemed it conducive for the public good for Israel to be allowed to do whatever it likes, with no limits. What is morally bad, apparently, is talking about it.

Green Party leader Zack Polanski and Your Party leader Jeremy Corbyn have joined calls for the British government to place British citizens who have served in the Israeli military under surveillance.

Polanski signed an open letter organised by Declassified UK and the International Centre of Justice for Palestinians (ICJP) to Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood and Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper urging them to "track the movements of Brits who have served in the IDF" and "subject them to secondary screening where necessary at ports of entry".

The letter called for "robust war crimes investigations in line with domestic and international law".

Around 2,000 British-Israeli dual nationals have served in the Israeli military during Israel's war on Gaza, which a UN commission of inquiry found was a genocide last year.

British far-right demonstrators have been accused of exploiting the murder of British student Henry Nowak to amplify Islamophobia - despite the incident having no links to Islam or Muslims

In Southampton on Tuesday, a group of far-right individuals rioted in the southern English city following the verdict on Nowak’s case, which convicted Vickrum Digwa of murder and sentenced him to life with a minimum of 21 years in prison.

Videos on social media appeared to show one man saying: "Our nation has been invaded. Many of them bow down to the false God of Islam. This is a Christian nation".

Digwa is a British Sikh and had stabbed Nowak with a Sikh dagger, also known as a kirpan.