In December 2024, Keir Starmer addressed the Labour Friends of Israel annual dinner in London. A few weeks earlier, Israel had been subjected to a ferocious bombardment from Iran in which over 200 ballistic missiles had been launched.
The Prime Minister was uncompromising: ‘I will not turn a blind eye while Iran seeks to destabilise the Middle East’, he vowed. ‘When Iran attacked Israel with ballistic missiles in April, the Labour Party stood with Israel, as our RAF shot down Iranian drones. When they did the same in October, our RAF stood ready to play their full part once more. And we will continue to do so.’
But that pledge, like so many others, was a cold, calculating lie. On Tuesday, the Government quietly released its legal position on the Iran conflict. Starmer published it to try to clarify his increasingly contradictory stance on the US use of British bases.
Initially he had vetoed their use, but then relented. According to the legal summary, ‘the Iranian regime’s reckless and ongoing indiscriminate attacks against countries in the region’ now required ‘a united response to restore peace and security and prevent further escalation of the conflict’. As a result, ‘the UK has responded to a US request which will facilitate specific and limited defensive action against missile facilities in Iran’.
But buried within the text was a crucial caveat: ‘The UK’s actions and related support to its allies is solely focused on ending the threat of air and missile attacks against regional allies unlawfully attacked by Iran and who have not been involved in hostilities from the outset’.
In other words, the Government was finally prepared to come to the aid of its allies, save for two. The United States, a Nato member and Israel.
In fact, Starmer’s stance was even worse. He would allow US pilots to take off from British bases and risk their lives protecting British interests by attacking Iranian launch platforms. He was prepared to see Israeli pilots do the same. But he would not deploy the RAF in a similar role. Or allow the RAF to specifically defend Israel, or forces deployed by the US.
There are a number of explanations for Starmer’s craven betrayal of two of our longest–standing and most important allies. The first is that Britain’s military response is not being managed by serving military officers, or even diplomats, but by lawyers.
Donald Trump fueled alarm about the state of the Special Relationship with the United Kingdom by condemning the Keir Starmer as ‘no Churchill’ as he was reluctant to involve UK forces in the conflict with Iran
Type 45 destroyer HMS Dragon is now being sent to Cyprus – but will not arrive for several days – along with helicopters that have counter–drone capabilities
Keir Starmer made his latest attempt to wash his hands of the US president’s military campaign in a speech to Muslims breaking their Ramadan fast last night
And one lawyer in particular: Attorney General Lord Hermer. As has been well documented, Hermer is a close friend of Sir Keir and a stickler for the finer points of international and human rights law.
Or at least he is until those breaching the law and people’s human rights turn up – purportedly via the ‘cab rank’ principle, which decrees barristers must represent without fear or favour those presented to them – at his Doughty Street legal chambers.
Amongst those he has fearlessly and objectively defended are Abid Naseer, an al–Qaeda operative who plotted to bomb a Manchester shopping centre, Abu Zubaydah, incarcerated in Guantanamo Bay for masterminding a terror attack on Los Angeles Airport and Maha Elgizouli, mother of El Shafee Elsheikh, one of the ISIS ‘Beatles’ who butchered journalists and aid workers.
But whilst Hermer is widely credited with vetoing British involvement in the initial strikes and the US use of UK bases, the blame for the Government’s perfidy cannot be solely laid at his door. Because, as we have seen, even he finally came to recognise that with Iranian missiles and drones hurtling around the Mediterranean and wider Middle East, some sort of military response was legally justified.
There is another explanation for Starmer’s callous abandonment of our allies which is altogether more prosaic: basic ineptitude and incompetence.
On Wednesday morning, the Ministry of Defence finally confirmed the Royal Navy’s anti–missile destroyer HMS Dragon would be belatedly sent to Cyprus to defend RAF Akrotiri. But it will be at least another week before she can sail.
A couple of hours later, it was announced that a United States guided–missile destroyer had successfully downed an Iranian ballistic missile that had been aimed at Cyprus but veered off course and threatened Turkey. So again, thanks to Keir Starmer’s vacillation, it’s being left to US sailors to risk their lives protecting our troops and bases from the Iranian assault, whilst our own sailors cool their heels in Portsmouth. And even when they finally arrive in theatre, their current rules of engagement restrict them to which of our allies we can actually defend.
But there’s one final, cynical explanation for Starmer’s decision to abandon Israel and the US to the Revolutionary Guards’ attack drones: he has calculated they are now surplus to his electoral requirements.
In opposition, his embrace of Israel was a vital part of his strategy of demonstrating his party had cured itself of the cancer of Corbynism. Similarly, his attitude to the Special Relationship was governed by a need to burnish his credentials as a senior statesman.
But now the political calculus has shifted. Yesterday evening, Starmer appeared in Parliament’s Westminster Hall with senior leaders of the Muslim community for the ‘Big Iftar’ event, to celebrate the end of the day’s fast. And his new message and priorities were clear. ‘We’ve seen far too many innocent lives lost, women and children among them, in Gaza most of all’, he began. ‘On Iran, I want to make clear, the UK was not involved in the offensive strikes of the US and Israel, and that remains the case’, he added.
The Jewish dead of October 7 were not mentioned. The Iranian attacks of 2024 were not mentioned. The importance of the alliance with the US was not mentioned.
On Tuesday, Donald Trump berated the Prime Minister, chiding ‘he’s no Winston Churchill’.
But by betraying our allies, Keir Starmer is demonstrating he is our Neville Chamberlain.
