tThere have been numerous opportunities for people to decide that they did not want to participate in the US war against Iran. The first was after the United States launched its first wave of attacks. To be fair, this was the moment when Keir Starmer and most of the UK felt that enough was enough and that our involvement would be limited to defensive attacks only.
You can’t really fault the logic. Did the UK really want to be part of a war that was illegal under most versions of international law and for which the Americans had no clear vision of how it might end? Aside from Donald Trump, he gets bored and lets everyone else clean up his mess. Like a baby. The United Kingdom’s war record in the 21st century was also no cause for pride. Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya had been in chaos. Iran was shaping up in the same way. So Starmer decided not to participate in this. Applying the medical principle of “first, do no harm.”
Interestingly, Kemi Badenoch and Nigel Farage saw exactly the same evidence and came to the opposite conclusion. Without hesitation, they pledged their undying support for the orange boy, who is one half extremely emotionally damaged and the other half a rambling idiot with no idea what he’s saying from one sentence to the next.
Never mind that Trump has rarely made sense and has never managed to coherently lay out his war goals. In fact, one wonders if I could locate Tehran on a map. But Kemi and Nige are right behind him. The entire essence of the special relationship based on blind submission. They could only laugh when Trump said regime change was no longer on the table because the Americans appeared to have eliminated their second and third choices to replace Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Then came the time 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 seems to have told the combatants), and that Keir Starmer was a loser.
As patriots (Kemi and Nige insist they love this country), you might have thought they would have felt a little queasy at an American president criticizing the country over a disagreement over whether the war was in British interests. After all, it took more than two years for the Americans to decide that it was in their best interest to fight alongside the British in World War II.
But no, Kemi and Nige decided they couldn’t get enough of Donald Trump insulting this country. Kemi even decided to intervene saying that the British troops were just hanging around. He hadn’t even realized that the aircrew were fighting defensive combat missions. To her they were simply cowards. Kemi channeling his inner Pete Hegseth. There is nothing low that Kemi won’t reach.
Over the weekend we had a rare moment of clarity. A moment when those last wavers 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 for it. I couldn’t believe that the UK had not done what the US demanded from the beginning. At that moment, every sensible person knew that the war had been a huge mistake.
Today, Blair looks like a shrunken corpse. On the surface, he is still well put together, but psychologically he is a mess. Get through everyday life with increasing doses of denial. He resists any form of therapy because he knows he would feel overwhelmed by shame and guilt. His insistence that he was right all along that everything became less convincing by the day. The toll on your mind and body must be unbearable. So of course he has to say that the US war against Iran is legitimate and the UK must be on the front line. Because to say otherwise is to open oneself to one’s mistakes and traumas from 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, he is considered one of the greatest and most erudite analysts and commentators on the Middle East. Tony has spoken. Kemi and Nige have had their memories of Iraq and Afghanistan erased. This time it will be different. They don’t know why they think this. They just do it. Iran is going to be a wonderful success.
Finally, however, there are some signs that reality is setting in for even the most extreme warmongers. Not because of the recognition that the conflict is far from being won in a few days as they expected, but because of economic realpolitik. The cost of a barrel of oil now exceeds $100. The price of fuel and energy is about to become very expensive in a current cost of living crisis. And no one is going to thank those politicians who were the loudest cheerleaders for the war.
Then, on Monday, Kemi was surprisingly silent on his favorite topic of why Starmer is a coward and instead used an interview to call for a fuel tax freeze. A little late for her to start reading the room. Even Robert Jenrick was being less of a Trump cheerleader as he shape-shifted to something resembling the Labor position. Still, you can trust Reform to throw up a sucker every day. And today it was Richard Tice’s turn. Dicky seemed to think that fracking would end all our problems. Aside from the fact that the geology of the UK is totally different to that of the US and almost no residents want earthquakes in their area, Dicky got it right as always.
That just left time for the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, to give an economic update on the impact of the war on the Commons. She would make the necessary decisions and be both responsive and responsible. Much 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 position than when the war in Ukraine started. It wasn’t entirely reassuring, but most things were out of Rachel’s control. He has no idea what Trump’s plans are. Neither does he.
The shadow chancellor, Mel Stride, looked a little confused. The war was going to make everything much more expensive. Something he seemed to have only realized after being one of the Conservatives’ loudest cheerleaders for the war in the previous weeks. Having a shadow chancellor who believes he lives in a consequence-free world is not a good idea. Especially when he had the nerve to accuse Reeves of gross mismanagement. Their main plan was to finance the war by cutting people’s benefits.
The Melster soon recovered. Labor had a plan for the war. De-escalation. The Conservatives seemed happy enough to let this escalate and continue indefinitely while complaining about energy costs. It would have been nice if Stride had clarified on that. Unfortunately it is above his salary.
