Over the last 46 days to 21 November, Israeli attacks have killed 13,517 Palestinian people in Gaza. 

Despite claiming to support a ceasefire in Gaza, Mr Sharma failed to vote for the SNP amendment to the King’s Speech on Wednesday, 15 November, which was the only one to call for a ceasefire. 56 of the more principled Labour MPs (including his Ealing colleague, Rupa Huq) did vote for the SNP amendment.

Instead, Mr Sharma supported the Labour amendment which did not call for a ceasefire. As Ben Jamal, director of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, said, “The Labour amendment with its call for longer humanitarian pauses is grotesque and a profound moral failure. In short, what it is proposing is to delay bombing for a short time to bring in aid and then resume the killing.”

In the six days since Mr Sharma failed to vote for a ceasefire, continued and intensified Israeli attacks killed more than 2,000 Palestinians.

Mr Sharma’s failure to vote for the SNP amendment is therefore in direct contradiction of the position he communicated to his constituents. He either lied about his position, to curry favour with constituents, or failed to vote for a ceasefire he believed necessary, in order to curry favour with Labour Party leadership.

We demand that he immediately retracts his support for the Labour amendment and publicly and unequivocally calls for a ceasefire. If he is unable to fulfill this basic humanitarian responsibility, we call for his resignation as an MP.