by Hugo Timms, spiked
The rantings of Helm, wife of national security adviser Jonathan Powell, reveal the poison of elite Israelophobia.
It’s never a good sign when a PM’s adviser makes the news, let alone when it’s down to his or her other half. Jonathan Powell, the UK’s national security adviser, is finding that out the hard way this week, following revelations about his wife’s Israel-focussed social-media activity. She has denied Hamas’s crimes and even blamed the existence of Israel for Hamas attacking it on October 7. She has also expressed support for Palestine Action, which led to a brief police investigation.
Powell’s wife is the author and former journalist, Sarah Helm. She initially made headlines last week by sticking her oar into the Sally Rooney imbroglio. Faber, Rooney’s publisher, said it would no longer stock her books in the UK because of the novelist’s pledge to donate all of her earnings to Palestine Action – a proscribed terror organisation, which it is illegal to support. ‘God help us authors who support Palestine and Palestine Action’, Helm wrote on X.
Unsurprisingly, this comment soon emerged in various media reports. How was it that the wife of the national security adviser could seemingly express support for an organisation that her husband’s very government made illegal? (The Telegraph suggests that the controversy has even led him to consider quitting, although reports of his unhappiness predate Helm’s Palestine Action tweet.)