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2 hours ago
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There have been any number of opportunities for people to decide they wanted no part of America’s war with Iran. The first was after the US had launched its first wave of strikes. To be fair, this was the moment Keir Starmer and most of the UK reckoned enough was enough and that our involvement would be limited to defensive strikes only.
You couldn’t really fault the logic. Did the UK really want to be part of a war that was illegal in most versions of international law and for which the Americans had no clear vision of how it might end? Other than Donald Trump gets bored and lets everyone else clear up his mess. Like a baby. Nor was the UK’s track record of wars in the 21st century any source of pride. Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya had all been in chaos. Iran was shaping up the same way. So Starmer decided to sit this one out. Applying the doctor’s principle of ”first, do no harm”.
Weirdly, Kemi Badenoch and Nigel Farage saw just the same evidence and came to the opposite conclusion. Without hesitation they promised their undying support for the orange man child, who is one half extreme emotional damage and the other half rambling idiot with no idea of what he is saying from one sentence to the next.
No matter that Trump seldom made sense and has never managed to coherently state his war objectives. Indeed you wonder if he could locate Tehran on a map. But Kemi and Nige are right behind him. The whole essence of the special relationship based on blind subservience. They could only laugh when Trump said regime change was now off the table because the Americans appeared to have killed their second and third choices to replace the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Then there was the moment when Donald Trump posted on social media that the special relationship was dead, that he didn’t need our support for a war he had already won – no one appears to have told the combatants – and that Keir Starmer was a loser.
As patriots – Kemi and Nige both insist they love this country – you might have thought they would have felt a little queasy at a US president rubbishing the country over a disagreement on whether the war was in British interests. After all, it had taken the Americans more than two years to decide it was in their interests to fight alongside the Brits in the second world war.
But no, Kemi and Nige decided they couldn’t get enough of Donald Trump insulting this country. Kemi even chose to get in on the act by saying British troops were just hanging around. She hadn’t even noticed aircrew were fighting defensive combat missions. To her they were just cowards. Kemi channelling her inner Pete Hegseth. There is no low to which Kemi won’t go.
Come the weekend we got a rare moment of clarity. A moment when those last waverers who couldn’t make up their minds about their support for the war came to see things more clearly. The revelation that Tony Blair was all in favour. Couldn’t believe the UK hadn’t done whatever the US demanded from the get go. At which point every right-thinking person knew the war was a massive mistake.
These days, Blair resembles a shrunken corpse. On the surface still well put together but psychologically a wreck. Making it through from day to day on ever higher doses of denial. Resistant to any form of therapy because he knows he would be overwhelmed by shame and guilt. His insistence he was right all along about everything becoming less convincing by the day. The toll on his mind and body must be unbearable. So of course he has to say the US war with Iran is legitimate and the UK must be on the frontline. Because to say otherwise is to open himself to his mistakes and traumas of the Iraq war. He has become his own unreliable narrator.
And yet … and yet Kemi and Nige find Blair completely plausible on Iran. More than that, they find him one of the greatest and most erudite of Middle East analysts and commentators. Tony has spoken. Kemi and Nige have had their memories of Iraq and Afghanistan expunged. This time it’s going to be different. They don’t know why they think this. They just do. Iran is going to be a wonderful success.
Finally, though, there are some signs of reality creeping in even to the most extreme warmongers. Not from a recognition that the conflict is far from won in days as they had hoped, but from the economic realpolitik. The cost of a barrel of oil is now over $100. The price of fuel and energy is about to get a lot more expensive in an continuing cost of living crisis. And no one is going to thank those politicians who were the loudest cheerleaders for the war.
So on Monday, Kemi was remarkably silent on her favourite subject of why Starmer is a coward and instead used an interview to call for a fuel-duty freeze. A little late in the day for her to start reading the room. Even Robert Jenrick was being less of a Trump cheerleader as he shape-shifted himself into something like Labour’s position. Still you can rely on Reform to throw up one halfwit each day. And today was the turn of Richard Tice. Dicky seemed to think fracking would end all our problems. Apart from the fact that the UK’s geology is totally different from the US’s and almost no residents want earthquakes in their area, Dicky was on the money as usual.
That just left time for the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, to give an economic update on the impact of the war in the Commons. She would take the necessary decisions and be both responsive and responsible. A lot would depend on how long and how widespread the war became. Britain had taken steps to be energy secure and we were in a better place than we were when the war in Ukraine kicked off. It wasn’t wholly reassuring, but there again most things were out of Rachel’s control. She has no idea what Trump’s plans are. Neither does he.
Shadow chancellor Mel Stride just sounded a bit confused. The war was going to make everything much more expensive. Something he appeared to have only just realised having been one of the Tories’ loudest cheerleaders for the war in the previous weeks. Having a shadow chancellor who thinks he lives in a consequence-free world is not a great look. Especially when he had the cheek to accuse Reeves of gross mismanagement. His main plan was to fund the war by cutting people’s benefits.
The Melster was soon put in his stride. Labour had a plan for the war. De-escalation. The Tories seemed happy enough to let it ramp up and go on indefinitely while complaining about energy costs. It would have been nice to get clarity on that from Stride. Unfortunately it’s above his pay grade.
