Nigel Farage has been accused of doing a U-turn after saying Britain should not get involved in Donald Trump’s war against Iran.
His comments on Tuesday contrasted with his previous statement that “the gloves have to be taken off” when it comes to Iran.
Anna Turley, chair of the Labor Party, said: “Reformers wanted the UK to go to war with Iran and are now trying to cover up the consequences for British families, including rising fuel prices.”
While Farage has insisted he does not pay attention to public opinion, a YouGov poll showed Reform 2024 voters are divided: almost a quarter (24%) want the UK to actively join the attack on Iran and 63% support a retaliatory or defensive position.
The conflict has exposed fault lines among senior foreign policy reform figures and the extent to which the UK should adopt a more isolationist “Britain First” stance, an echo of divisions in Trump’s own conservative base in the United States. This is what key figures have said.
Nigel Farage
On Tuesday, Farage said: “There are different opinions about whether we should physically join the attacks. I, as a leader, say to you that if we can’t even defend Cyprus, let’s not get involved in another foreign war.”
This contrasts with his first public comments after the start of the war, when he said he favored “regime change” in Iran and told a Westminster press conference: “We should do everything we can to support the operation.”
Richard Tice
Reform’s deputy leader has taken an enthusiastic stance from the start. In recent years he has divided his time between his Lincolnshire constituency and Dubai, where his partner lives.
“We would help the Americans and the Israelis in any way they considered appropriate because this is a strategic and permanent threat to all of our security and interests,” he said. “If requests had been made, we would have said, ‘Yes, we’d be happy to help.’”
Robert Jenrick
The former Conservative minister and spokesman for Treasury Reform set out an explicit “non-intervention” position on Monday. In an article in the Telegraph, he said a prolonged conflict would skyrocket prices and hurt British consumers.
“We are a party for workers, not for protracted wars in faraway places,” Jenrick wrote, lashing out at “the liberal interventionists of the early 21st century. The British people are fed up with them. It’s time to get real and put Britain first.”
Andrea Jenkyns
The mayor of Greater Lincolnshire, who holds Reform’s most powerful public position, even raised the possibility that she could support British troops on the ground in Iran.
“Do I want to see British troops on the ground? Ideally not at the moment,” he said when asked on Sky News on Monday. “Nothing can be ruled out. It’s too hostile. We don’t know the direction it will take. Should we use more of our weapons? Without a doubt.”
Nadhim Zahawi
The recently recruited reformist member and former Conservative chancellor told the Sun last month that Britain should support and join the bombing of Iran by the United States and Israel.
On Sunday, he told Times Radio that the UK should at least have made its bases available to the United States from the beginning for the offensive and “put everything at the disposal of our greatest ally, the United States of America.”
Zahawi, who was born into an Iraqi-Kurdish family that fled Saddam Hussein, said Iran had to remain “coherent as a nation” but acknowledged that the United States was determined to create an environment for the Iranian people to “rise again.”
