What happened
The exchange itself was unambiguous. Ferrari asked directly whether a siege — cutting off water and power to Gaza's civilian population — was appropriate; Starmer replied "I think that Israel does have that right," then pivoted to defending Israel's right to defend itself and to attributing responsibility for the war to Hamas, without retracting or qualifying the specific claim about water and power. Labour's official response afterward was that there had been "overlapping questions and answers" and that Starmer had meant to address Israel's right to self-defence generally, not specifically endorse cutting off water and electricity — a clarification that did not appear in the interview itself and was issued only after the backlash began.
The remarks prompted resignations from several Labour councillors, including in Manchester and Oxford, citing "horrifying comments" about withholding water, food, and electricity from a besieged civilian population, and contributed to wider unease inside the party that would surface again over the following year in Labour's parliamentary handling of Gaza ceasefire votes. Legal and humanitarian experts pointed out that Starmer's own caveat — "within international law" — was itself in tension with the specific practice he had just endorsed: cutting off water, food, and electricity to an entire civilian population is a textbook example of collective punishment, prohibited under the Fourth Geneva Convention regardless of the underlying conflict's justification.
This is recorded in Starmer's own government period (though the remarks were made in opposition, four days after October 7 and while a full siege was actively being imposed on Gaza) because they set the tone for a Gaza/Israel policy stance many Labour MPs, members, and eventually voters — particularly in seats with large Muslim populations — regarded as a defining early signal of Starmer's leadership, well before he entered Downing Street the following year.