Two months ago I was sitting in a hotel in Tel Aviv, where I wrote the following words. ‘According to several senior political, military and diplomatic sources, the United States and Israel are preparing to launch a strike on Iran that will finally eradicate the threat posed by the country’s nuclear weapons programme.’
“This should have been avoided a long time ago,” a senior Israeli government source told me. “It’s time to draw a line.”’
I knew in April the finishing touches were being put to what Benjamin Netanyahu dubbed Operation Rising Lion. Tehran knew. Washington knew. The global diplomatic community knew.
But for some reason the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom appears to have been completely blindsided by events. With potentially disastrous implications for Britain’s interests and influence in the region, and the wider world.
Downing Street officials insist Sir Keir was fully aware of the impending attack, but diplomatic sources are sceptical.
‘Britain was kept out of it,’ one told me. ‘Israel have been very suspicious of Starmer since the partial arms embargo and the sanctions on Ben-Gvir and Smotrich [two hard-Right Israeli ministers]. If they were told, it wasn’t until the very last moment.’
Which paradoxically is just as well. Because if Keir Starmer was made aware of the strikes in advance, that makes his chaotic and fumbling response even more inexcusable.
What’s been staggering during the past few days is the almost childish naivety with which Starmer has opted to take Trump’s words to him at face value, writes Dan Hodges
Did he support or oppose Israeli action? He couldn’t say. Would RAF jets defend Israel from Iranian attacks, as they had done last April, and he had pledged to do in December? He couldn’t say. Following the withdrawal of Foreign Office staff from Israel should other British nationals attempt to leave too, No 10 was asked? It couldn’t answer.
Then came his humiliation at the hands of Donald Trump. Faced with rumours the US was preparing to join the Israeli attack, the Prime Minister appeared at the G7 summit in Canada to confidently calm everyone’s nerves. ‘There’s nothing the President said that suggests he’s about to get involved in this conflict,’ he explained. ‘On the contrary, throughout the dinner yesterday, I was sitting right next to President Trump, so I’ve no doubt in my mind the level of agreement there was.’
A few hours later Trump left Alberta to return to the White House Situation Room and approve the final attack plan for Iran.
Which, in turn, precipitated Keir Starmer’s own hurried dash back to London, and dive into the Cobra briefing room to thrash out the UK’s response. Where the confusion and contradictions promptly spiralled.
‘Clearly de-escalation is the priority and we would not want to see anything that ramps up the situation,’ the PM’s spokesman announced. So what did that mean for the ongoing US military build-up at the British base on Diego Garcia, ceding control over which has just cost the taxpayer £3.4 billion? He couldn’t say.
At precisely that moment 12 US Air Force F-22 Raptors were gliding in to land at RAF Lakenheath in Suffolk in preparation for their own role in any future attack.
Over what has been a torrid first year of Sir Keir’s premiership, Downing Street has been keen to frame foreign affairs as one of the Prime Minister’s success stories. Ministers confirm it is the part of the job he enjoys most.
An Iranian ballistic missile hits a medical centre in Beersheba, Israel
‘Keir’s actually most happy when he’s heading out of the country,’ one told me. But during the past week Starmer’s pretensions to become the new Lord Palmerston have been comprehensively rubbished.
Government insiders insist the problems thrown up by the Iran crisis simply reflect the complexities of conducting diplomacy in the age of Trump.
‘Dealing with the inner circle provides certain challenges,’ one told me, with masterful understatement.
But what’s been staggering during the past few days is the almost childish naivety with which Starmer has opted to take Trump’s words to him at face value. When everyone else who deals with the peripatetic President knows his promises aren’t worth the paper they aren’t written on.
Somewhere over the last year, Starmer has convinced himself he is the Trump Whisperer, with a unique way of divining the MAGA mogul’s inner thoughts and plans. But all the mounting evidence is that the opposite is true.
Trump completely blindsided Starmer over his decision to pull intelligence-sharing from Ukraine. He did it again over tariffs. And he’s just done it again over Iran.
Another problem is Starmer’s increasingly alarming tendency to see global events unfolding through the prism he would prefer, rather than as they actually are.
A woman is evacuated from the site of an Iranian missile strike in Ramat Gan, Israel earlier this week
On Friday, The Spectator’s Tim Shipman reported how decisions on Iran were being shaped by the rigid legal advice being proffered by Sir Keir’s friend and fellow human rights lawyer Lord Hermer. ‘The Attorney General has concerns about the UK playing any role in this except for defending our allies,’ a source revealed.
That’s not how the real world – and complex network of international alliances governing it – works.
The Attorney General isn’t a human version of ChatGPT. You don’t ask, ‘Is this military action legal?’ and get a neat, definitive reply. The law is open to multiple interpretations.
Starmer’s job is to weigh the UK’s national interest and make his decision. Hermer’s job is to construct the legal case to support it.
But perhaps the biggest problem of all is that Keir Starmer increasingly seems to view his role as not being British Prime Minister at all, so much as some form of glorified global marriage guidance counsellor. The ‘bridge’ between the EU and the US. The ‘deal-broker’ between US and Ukraine. The ‘peacemaker’ between Israel and Iran.
Yet as has just been rudely demonstrated, if you continue to try to be everyone’s friend, eventually you find yourself a friend and ally to no one. Leaving you dangerously isolated. Or, as Sir Keir has just discovered, dangerously ignorant.
The Prime Minister has grand dreams of reshaping British diplomacy. But to do that he has to master one of the fundamentals. Which is securing at least a basic understanding of what our allies and enemies are actually going to do.
We were told Keir Starmer was the Foreign Policy Prime Minister. But over the past week he clearly has had no clue what Israel were planning, what Iran were planning and what the US were planning.
Which begs a question. Given the recent implosion of his economic policy, his pensions policy, his welfare policy, his immigration policy, his law and order policy, his policy on defence spending, his policy on the rape gangs and half a dozen other major areas, if our Prime Minister is now losing his grip on vital international affairs, what exactly is the point of him?
