Chris Mason: Burnham looks to show he will go further than Starmer with West Bank sanctions

There is little doubt that the UK's decision to ban imports from Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank is another significant shift in Britain's posture in the Middle East.

The announcement from the Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband , with the Prime Minister Andy Burnham alongside him in the House of Commons, comes almost exactly a year after the UK formally recognised a Palestinian state . And it comes garnished with blunt language about Israel's conduct.

This latest announcement is both a logical extension of that decision of 12 months ago, senior figures argue, but also, in words and actions, an expression of Burnham's desire to go further than his predecessor Sir Keir Starmer was willing to.

It is, Miliband believes, a re-assertion of the logic of eventually arriving at a two-state solution – a viable Palestinian state alongside Israel.

The foreign secretary passionately argued that the UK did have agency and could act – and to do nothing would amount to failure. "A strategy of passivity in the face of what is happening is not a strategy," is how Miliband put it in an interview with Jewish News , external .

There is a pride among his team that after a diplomatic effort over the summer, there is a breadth to the coordinated international action on this, with 11 other countries, including France and Canada, sharing the same approach.

"We provided a convening and coordinating role in pulling this together," one source told me, "but we didn't have to convince others to do this. They were coming to the same view themselves, so we agreed we should all go out and say this at the same time."

The hope is that coordinated action increases the likelihood that the measures will have an impact and minimises the blowback to any one country from Israel or America.