It’s not often that Keir Starmer’s allies believe he has Nigel Farage and Kemi Badenoch on the run, but when it comes to Iran, they think he is on the right side of history and public opinion.
“It could be his creation,” said Emily Thornberry, Labor chair of the foreign affairs committee, who was the first to say she thought Donald Trump’s attacks on Iran were illegal. “There hasn’t been a British prime minister who has said no to an American president since Vietnam. This is a big deal.”
Since the protracted disasters of Iraq and Afghanistan, the prospect of helping the United States facilitate regime change in another foreign country has been deeply unpopular with the public.
Starmer has sought a middle ground: refusing to allow the United States to operate from British bases for initial attacks, but then giving it permission to use them in defensive actions to destroy Iranian missiles. It has earned him the ire of Trump and public approval in the United Kingdom, and has emboldened many within the Labor Party who believe he is acting more on his own political instincts.
One Labor MP said Starmer’s decision, after several days, to become even more critical of US attacks on Iran had made them feel that they “recognise this person as the real Starmer, closer to Robin Cook than Tony Blair” on these matters.
By contrast, Farage and Badenoch were quick to say that Starmer was not doing enough to support joint US-Israeli strikes. The UK’s reformist leader said when the conflict began: “We should do everything we can to support the operation.”
However, as oil prices rose and public opinion hardened against the war over the past week, both adjusted their positions. A YouGov poll this week found that six in 10 Britons oppose military action, while a quarter are in favor of it.
Badenoch now denies that he wanted the UK to join the war and says he wanted Britain only to help eliminate the Iranian missiles. Meanwhile, Farage held a rally at a petrol station promising 25p off a liter of fuel and saying: “If we can’t even defend Cyprus, let’s not get involved in another foreign war.”
One senior conservative said: “We just seemed confused and the messaging has been terrible. But most of us on the right really believe that Starmer was dead wrong not to support Trump in the first place, so the right thing to do would be to hold firm, whatever the public says.”
Andrew Mitchell, a Conservative veteran and former deputy foreign secretary, said rejecting Trump’s request was a “very big mistake” and that Starmer would be shown to have failed to act in the UK’s long-term national interest.
“The United States is our closest ally and friend, and when the president asked us for help in using joint bases (essentially he wanted them for refueling), the answer should have been yes,” he said. “It is truly disgraceful that Starmer said no based on questionable legal advice, thus proving that Starmer is a lawyer, not a political leader.”
Although the majority of the public is against the war, opinion polls suggest that conservative voters are almost evenly divided. Reform voters are more likely than supporters of other parties to back the Iran war, but there is still an isolationist flank on the far right attracted to the message of Rupert Lowe – a former Reform MP who now sits as an independent – that “it is not our fight”. The risks of appearing too pro-war and pro-Trump appear to have forced both right-wing parties to moderate their initial messages.
But Alan Mendoza, Reform’s senior adviser on global affairs and executive director of the right-wing Henry Jackson Society think tank, said the party still believed Starmer was wrong to have rejected Trump’s request and maintained that Farage had been consistent throughout.
“He would have said yes when the United States asked that question on the first day. And of course he would also have made sure in the first place that the British bases were defended,” Mendoza said, adding that no one in the United Kingdom had suggested or was in favor of joining an offensive bombing action or a ground invasion.
He also questioned whether the polls were asking the right questions about support for Iranian military action, and suggested that framing the questions around whether it was in Britain’s strategic interest to back an ally would generate a more positive response.
However, those inside Downing Street are confident they have got the strategy right in this case, and internal polling shows support for Starmer’s approach. A senior Downing Street figure said: “(Reform mayor) Andrea Jenkyns does not rule out boots on the ground being exactly the wrong side.”
Labour’s position is also useful in explaining any potential impact on the cost of living. “Obviously, how people assign blame is a multifaceted issue, but we can turn around and say this is exactly why we don’t think we should get involved in the Middle East,” they said.
Other senior MPs within the Labor Party have been reflecting on whether Starmer would have made the same decision to block the US use of military bases if Peter Mandelson was still ambassador to the US and his ally Morgan McSweeney was still chief of staff.
Ben Judah, a former adviser to David Lammy when he was foreign secretary, said right-wing parties had gotten into trouble because they “basically made the decision on day one to try to use that old ‘have you failed the special relationship’ card.” to try to attack the prime minister.”
He added: “I think because of their own leadership’s inexperience in foreign policy and lack of curiosity about the world beyond Westminster, they were anticipating that this would be a Venezuela-style one-night story. And it turns out, in reality, that this is a week-long, deeply disruptive event in the global economy, which really worries voters, and at the gas pump. And you see them changing their positions.”
He said that for the Conservatives this was because the party “lost that kind of strength on foreign policy now that they are in opposition”, and that Farage “has a problem with America”.
“Trump 2.0 is not governing the same way he campaigned,” Judah said. “He campaigned on an isolationist platform, he literally campaigned for world peace.
“We have seen Reform attempt to professionalise and become the truly competitive Conservative party, from the old UKIP brand of isolationists to a more neo-conservative and pro-American stance.
“That kind of neocon tradition in the UK is one thing when the United States behaves in a way that is good for its politician, praising him, or when the United States is perceived to be on the rise or moving forward, but now it has become a problem for him.”
However, not all cabinet members agree on whether the UK’s strategy will ultimately prove to be the right one. While an unprecedented leak to the Spectator from a national security council meeting showed that Ed Miliband, Rachel Reeves and Yvette Cooper had strongly supported blocking the US from using British military bases, at least one senior cabinet minister is worried that the long-term impact on the transatlantic relationship will be disastrous for the UK’s standing and security.
Thornberry is more confident that the relationship will recover. “We will always be close to the United States,” he said. “They are our closest ally. But there are times when you can disagree. We survived Vietnam, we will survive this. And it’s not like they haven’t led us to make some pretty disastrous decisions in the near past.
“People, well, men in particular, get especially excited about wars, and they’re pretty popular to begin with. And then as they start to think about what they mean and what the ramifications of them are, then war starts to affect daily life, war starts to lose popularity. You don’t have to have been around that long to have experience in Middle Eastern wars. You know, we know how this goes.”
