I must admit, I’m generally not enamoured with politicians, but I’m happy with the events of today.

UK Foreign Secretary Ed Milliband announced that we would block trade with Israel’s illegal West Bank settlements. I’m particularly content because I always considered Milliband a bit wishy-washy, a goofy, overgrown student agitator.

This makes me happy because even if we put emotive TV News stories to one side, we see the statistics, that the number of settlers has tripled during the Netanyahu government alone.

I doubt the move will be anything more than symbolic. The UK does about £6 bn of trade with Israel (the total area) per year. Sounds a lot but that number becomes almost £2 tn with the rest of the world. Let alone the difficulty of pinpointing whether goods have originated from the West Bank, or from Israel proper. But it is symbolic. It tells Israelis that we don’t approve of these settlements.

It’s also comforting that something like 12 other European countries, plus Canada, took the same course of action. So while I sit in the UK and think Israeli settlements are wrong, Josef Blogski in Poland is thinking the same thing. Big countries like France and Spain and most of Scandinavia also jumped on board. Again, it is only symbolic, but it tells Israelis that a significant part of the rest of the world does not agree with these settlements. On its own, the UK is pretty insignificant these days.

They might, at this moment, feel sufficiently confident in their position to say “fuck you”, but Israel has become increasingly isolated, and I can’t help but think that burning their bridges with their former friends might one day come back to haunt them. All it takes is a bad US election, and they’ll be all on their own with a big, bad world out there.

So, yes, for once I’m happy with my politicians.