PRIME Minister Andy Burnham has pulled out of an appearance at the Edinburgh Fringe.
The Labour leader had been due to appear at The Stand on Wednesday, August 19 for an “In Conversation With” event.
However, it is understood that Downing Street has concluded it will be logistically impossible for the Prime Minister to make the date, which was initially booked while he was the mayor of Greater Manchester.
A spokesperson for Burnham said: "This event was arranged before the Prime Minister took office and he had hoped to be able to honour that commitment.
"Unfortunately, the demands of being Prime Minister mean he is no longer able to attend. He is disappointed and is grateful to the organisers and ticket holders for their understanding."
The Stand has said refunds will be issued to ticket-holders.
The sold-out event was due to be targeted by pro-Palestine protesters organised by the Edinburgh Action for Palestine group.
Activists alleged that Burnham was “engaged in more of the same war-mongering, genocide-supporting, far-right pandering we witnessed during [Keir] Starmer’s reign”.
Before taking office, Burnham said that the UK Government’s response to Israel’s actions in Gaza and Palestine had “too often not been good enough”.
He suggested that his Labour government would “do more to strengthen our approach”, but stopped short of committing to any concrete actions and did not label the Gaza atrocities a “genocide”.
Burnham’s refusal to use the term genocide put him at odds with leading authorities such as the International Association of Genocide Scholars, and a United Nations commission of inquiry.
Edinburgh Action for Palestine has said the Prime Minister’s avoidance of the term was “not surprising as Burnham joined Labour Friends of Israel in 2015, shortly after Israel's massacre of 2200 Palestinians”.
The Labour Government has also been silent for more than two years on an International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruling that Israel’s presence in occupied Palestinian territories like Gaza, East Jerusalem, and the West Bank is “illegal”.
The court said that other UN states, including the UK, were therefore obliged to “ensure compliance by Israel with international humanitarian law” and to refrain from any dealings with Israel relating to occupied Palestinian land.
However, the Labour Government has continued to allow trade between the UK and illegally occupied Palestinian land.
Burnham has said that he will be “looking at measures to ban trade in goods with illegal settlements”.
