Benedict Cumberbatch, Annie Lennox, Gary Lineker and Dua Lipa have joined more than 300 public figures calling on the prime minister to “end the UK’s complicity” in Gaza.

In an open letter addressed to Sir Keir Starmer, seen exclusively by Sky News, famous names from the world of media and the arts have joined leading doctors, academics, campaign groups, and a Holocaust survivor.

They have accused the British government of continuing to allow UK arms to be sold to Israel and to providing licences for arms.

The letter, led by refugee charity Choose Love, demands an immediate suspension of all UK arms sales to Israel, immediate humanitarian access for experienced aid agencies, and urges the government to commit to brokering a ceasefire for “the children of Gaza”.

In September 2024, the UK suspended 30 arms licences from about 350 involved in items that go to Israel.

Last week, Sir Keir joined the French and Canadian leaders to warn Israel they will take “concrete actions” if it continues an “egregious” expansion of military operations in Gaza.

The PM also told MPs last week the level of suffering in Gaza, especially among innocent children, was “intolerable” and called Israel’s decision to allow a small amount of aid in “utterly inadequate”.

The letter says: “We urge you to take immediate action to end the UK’s complicity in the horrors in Gaza.”

It says children in Gaza are starving while food and medicine “sit just minutes away” in reference to Israel’s 11-week blockade of food and other supplies into Gaza, which was lifted last week.

A new foundation backed by Israel and the US has set up an aid distribution site this week, but the UN has rejected the system as it says it cannot meet the needs of Gaza’s 2.1 million people.

The UN, which has warned the population is facing catastrophic levels of hunger, said it believes 47 people were injured on Tuesday when crowds overwhelmed the aid distribution centre, but Israel said its troops only fired “warning shots” into the air.

Among the famous people to put their names to the letter are singers Dua Lipa, Annie Lennox, Paloma Faith, Massive Attack and Primal Scream.

Actors include Benedict Cumberbatch, Riz Ahmed, Game of Thrones actress Lena Headey, Tilda Swinton, Maxine Peake, Marvel actress Zawe Ashton, Bridgerton actress Nicola Coughlan, and director Danny Boyle.

TV stars include Dermot O’Leary, Gary Lineker, Chicken Shop Date creator Amelia Dimoldenberg, and presenter Laura Whitmore.

Lineker finished his 26-year stint as Match of the Day presenter this week, after apologising for sharing a social media post from the Palestine Lobby group titled: “Zionism explained in two minutes.”

The Instagram post was illustrated with a rat, which has been used to represent Jewish people in antisemitic propaganda – including Nazi Germany.

Lineker “apologised unreservedly” for sharing it, saying he was unaware of the reference and it was a mistake. He maintained the importance of “speaking out on humanitarian issues, including the tragedy unfolding in Gaza”.

Photographer and activist Misan Harriman, writer, model and activist Munroe Bergdorf, artist Tracey Emin and model Lily Cole have also signed the letter.

Holocaust survivor Stephen Kapos has signed the letter, which says 71,000 children under four years old are “acutely malnourished” and they “cry until they can’t cry anymore – until hunger takes even their voices”.

It says they wake up to bombs falling on them, “violence stamped with UK inaction – flown with parts shipped from British factories to Israel”.

The letter warns Sir Keir: “You can’t call it ‘intolerable’, yet do nothing.

“The world is watching and history will not forget. The children of Gaza cannot wait another minute.

“Prime minister, what will you choose? Complicity in war crimes, or the courage to act?”

The letter comes just days after 828 UK-based or qualified legal experts, among them former Supreme Court justices, signed a letter to Sir Keir warning “genocide is being perpetrated in Gaza”.

Israel has repeatedly denied that it is committing genocide in Gaza.

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A government spokesperson said: “We strongly oppose the expansion of military operations in Gaza and call on the Israeli Government to cease its offensive and immediately allow for unfettered access to humanitarian aid.

“The denial of essential humanitarian assistance to the civilian population in Gaza is unacceptable and risks breaching International Humanitarian Law.

“Last year, we suspended export licences to Israel for items used in military operations in Gaza and continue to refuse licences for military goods that could be used by Israel in the current conflict.

“We urge all parties to urgently agree a ceasefire agreement and work towards a permanent and sustainable peace.”

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Kemi Badenoch will be gone as Tory leader within a year – and there are plots already under way to oust her, Dominic Cummings has said.

The former Number 10 aide also claimed the Conservative Party “might be dead”.

His remarks came in a wide-ranging interview with Sky News, in which the controversial figure, who served as Boris Johnson’s chief adviser from 2019 to 2020, said Nigel Farage could “definitely” become the next prime minister.

On Ms Badenoch, who won the Tory leadership race last November, Mr Cummings said: “Kemi is going to go, probably this year.

“There’s already people who are organising to get rid of her, and I think that that will work. If it doesn’t work this year, it will definitely happen after next May.

“She’s a goner, so there’s going to be a big transition there.”

In a damning indictment of the party he served, he said: “It’s quite possible the Tories have just, kind of, crossed the event horizon and actually aren’t salvageable.

“Like, everyone sort of assumes that because they’ve always been around, then somehow there must be at least one last chance for them to turn things around, but it’s possible that chance is in their past and doesn’t exist.

“It might be dead.”

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Mr Cummings revealed he has held meetings with Mr Farage and advised him on how to go from “one man and an iPhone” to entering Downing Street.

Asked if the Reform UK leader could be prime minister, he said: “It could definitely happen now, yeah, because the old system’s just so completely broken.

“If he does what I’m suggesting, and actually sets out a path for how Reform is going to change, how Reform is going to bring in people, how it’s structurally going to alter, what it’s going to build, how it is going to do policy, how it can recruit MPs, etc.

“If he does that, then there’ll be a huge surge of interest and support into the whole thing.”

‘One man and an iPhone’

He added: “Reform has been a one-man band. It’s been Nigel and an iPhone.

“They can win 50, 100, 150 seats with Reform as Nigel and an iPhone.

“But they can’t win an overall general election and have a plan for government and have a serious team able to take over in Downing Street and govern and control Whitehall with one man and an iPhone.”

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However, the ex-Downing Street aide was also scathing about Mr Farage’s personal appeal, saying it was his party, not him, that had become an outlet for anti-establishment feeling.

“It’s not exactly correlated with what people think about Nigel himself,” he said.

“Reform is a vehicle for people to say: ‘We despise you, Westminster. We hate both the old parties, we hate Whitehall, we hate the old media, we hate the whole f***ing lot of you.’

“And Farage going up in the polls is the expression of that core feeling.”

Mr Cummings left his Downing Street role in November 2020 after attracting controversy during the coronavirus lockdown when he drove to Barnard Castle in County Durham and claimed he was testing his eyesight.

Russia-linked hackers posing as journalists targeted staff at Britain’s Ministry of Defence in a cyber spying operation that was spotted and thwarted, the government has revealed.

Details of the foiled hack emerged as Defence Secretary John Healey said the UK military is bolstering its own offensive capabilities to conduct cyber attacks against hostile states like Russia as part of a long-awaited review of UK defence.

The Strategic Defence Review is expected to be published on Monday. It was launched by Sir Keir Starmer last July and comes ahead of a major summit of NATO allies in June.

A major new podcast series by Sky News and Tortoise which begins on 10 June will explore the state of UK defences by running a wargame that simulates a Russian attack on the UK.

“The nature of warfare is changing,” Mr Healey told a group of journalists on a visit to a secure facility in Wiltshire where the defence team that defeated the Russian cyber attack is located.

“The keyboard is now a weapon of war and we are responding to that.”

Part of this response, announced on Thursday, includes the creation of a new cyber command to oversee offensive and defensive cyber operations.

The government also plans to invest more than £1bn on improving its ability to hunt, locate and strike targets on the battlefield, drawing on digital technology.

“In future conflict, those that prevail will be those who are not just better equipped and better trained, but better connected and also capable of innovating ahead of adversaries,” the defence secretary said.

The thwarted Russia-linked hack was one of more than 90,000 cyber attacks associated with hostile states that were directed against the UK military and other parts of defence over the past two years – a doubling from the previous two years, the Ministry of Defence said.

Part of the increase is because the military is getting better at spotting the attempts against its networks. However, it is understood the attacks are becoming more sophisticated – making them harder to combat.

Late last year, the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), which is part of GCHQ, alerted the Ministry of Defence to a suspected spear phishing campaign.

The Global Operations Security Control Centre at MoD Corsham, in Wiltshire, which defends the Ministry of Defence’s networks in the UK and overseas, was tasked with identifying the threat.

The team worked on computers inside a large, windowless hall – filled with rows of desks and a bank of large screens along one wall.

“MoD detected a spear phishing campaign targeting staff with the aim of delivering malware,” the analysis by the NCSC said.

“The initial campaign consisted of two emails with a journalistic theme attempting to represent a news organisation. The second campaign followed a financial theme, directing targets to a commercial file share.”

The officials who were involved revealed details of the effort during the defence secretary’s visit to MoD Corsham this week.

One of the individuals said it took about an hour to spot the attack.

Asked what it felt like to discover the intrusion, the individual said “cool”.

The malware was linked to a Russian hacking group called RomCom, a second official said.

The particular code that was used had not been seen before, so the British side gave it the name “Damascened Peacock”.

“Corsham is famous for peacocks,” they said.

The two officials are part of a team of cyber experts – a mix of military personnel, civil servants and civilian contractors – who work at the secure centre.

A key focus at the moment is protecting a major deployment by the Royal Navy’s aircraft carrier, HMS Prince of Wales, loaded with state-of-the-art F-35 fast jets and protected by a task force of warships, as it travels through the Red Sea off the coast of Yemen.

The carrier strike group is expected to pass through the Bab el-Mandeb Strait in the coming days – well within range of an Iranian-backed militia that has targeted British and American warships and well as commercial shipping with missiles.

The cyber experts, though, are trying to defend the deployment from cyber attacks.

Earlier in the month, US President Donald Trump struck a deal with Houthi militants to stop them from attacking ships, but the British side is still very alert to the potential threat.

“The strike group is going through what could be a high risk dangerous passage,” Mr Healey said.