Yesterday morning armed forces minister Luke Pollard appeared on LBC radio to present the Government’s view on the US strikes on Iran.
Unfortunately for Pollard, his government didn’t have a view. ‘Are we opposing the action?’ Nick Ferrari asked him not once, but seven times. ‘Um…morning…um…er…let’s be absolutely clear…’ Pollard stammered.
But he wasn’t clear at all. ‘That’s not one for me to comment on,’ was the closest he came to expressing an opinion on the bombing.
To be fair to Pollard, at least he had the courage to put himself in the firing line. Unlike his Prime Minister.
Over the past week Keir Starmer has stood accused of naivety, vacillation, denial and outright incompetence as he’s floundered around, desperately trying – and failing – to keep ahead of events in the Middle East. But this morning he is facing another, even more serious, charge. Rank, craven, cowardice.
Ever since US bunker buster bombs slammed into Iranian nuclear facilities at Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan, the stance Sir Keir has adopted on behalf of the United Kingdom has been morally, diplomatically and politically bankrupt. Actually, that may be over-generous, given he hasn’t actually managed to adopt a stance of any clarity at all.
In the immediate aftermath of the strikes, Starmer issued a statement. ‘Iran’s nuclear programme is a grave threat to international security,’ he declared. ‘Iran can never be allowed to develop a nuclear weapon and the US has taken action to alleviate that threat.’
On the surface, it looked as if the Prime Minister had finally come off the fence and was backing his allies. But then his aides began circulating, pointing out his words didn’t contain any actual endorsement at all.
They were simply an acknowledgment of the facts on the ground. British forces and bases had not been involved, they emphasised.
So this is Starmer’s position. Or non-position. The British Government believes Iran did actually have an active nuclear programme.
The British Government’s policy is that Iran cannot be allowed to possess a nuclear weapon. The British Government recognises servicemen of our closest ally have risked their lives neutralising that threat, protecting British lives and interests in the process.
But, under orders from its Prime Minister, that government is now going to wash its hands of them.
To paraphrase Jack Nicholson in A Few Good Men, Keir Starmer has decided to rise and sleep under the blanket of the freedom his allies provide, then turn his back on them because of the manner in which they’re providing it.
‘This is the dirty work Israel is doing for all of us,’ German Chancellor Friedrich Merz admitted last week. The US can now be added to that list. But Keir Starmer is going to do whatever it takes to keep his own precious hands clean.
Even if that involves hiding behind the skirts of his own colleagues. Over the past few days Westminster has been awash with the highly convenient rumour that those fragrant Prime Ministerial palms have also been tied by the legal advice proffered by his Attorney General Lord Hermer.
Last week Ministers were confidently asserting Starmer would do nothing that could place him on the wrong side of international law.
But now those same Ministers are refusing even to say whether they believe the US action was legal or not. With the effect Sir Keir is no longer just hiding behind Hermer’s skirt, he’s clambered into his laundry basket, and vowed not to come out until the coast is clear.
In reality, the Government gave de-facto legal legitimacy to the US action the moment it confirmed Iran’s WMD programme was real and active.
Coupled with Iran’s flagrant breaches of its non-proliferation obligations, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) recognition of its accelerating Uranium enrichment and Tehran’s ongoing regional destabilisation of the region via its proxies and terror groups, the case for action was sound.
Yesterday, some Starmer allies had abandoned the pretence there was any moral basis to his stance, and instead pointed to the raw politics. ‘My constituents don’t want us getting into any more foreign wars,’ one told me. ‘And if Keir keeps us out of this one he’ll get credit for it.’
But that’s a simplistic view of the wider political implications of the Prime Minister’s spinelessness. Within government there is alarm at the way Downing Street has been so utterly blindsided by recent events.
And there is growing anger at the way Ministers are again being dispatched like the Light Brigade to defend policies and stances without any coherent line of defence.
Even more significant is the way Starmer is increasingly allowing himself to be pushed around by the hard-Left of his party. And even more disgracefully, how he is now openly tailoring his Middle-East policy to try to appeal to his party’s fracturing Muslim base.
It was noticeable how his ambiguous response to the US strikes was positively Churchillian when compared to the pusillanimous equivocation he deployed after the initial Israeli attacks.
As if he was attempting to send the subliminal signal: ‘US bombs are tolerable, but Israeli bombs are beyond the pale.’
In the days ahead No 10 will attempt to present the Prime Minister’s obfuscation as part of some masterly diplomatic 3D chess. But his jelly-like irresolution will now begin to actively undermine his own stated foreign policy objectives.
This is the man who claims to want to construct a ‘Coalition of the willing’, to confront the existential threat to European peace posed by Vladimir Putin.
But who is now going to follow Keir Starmer up that treacherous hill? ‘Sorry, I know Putin is currently bombing you. But I’m just waiting on Lord Hermer’s legal advice before I send British troops to help. Hopefully he’ll be back after lunch.’
Precisely who is the past week’s flaccid statecraft meant to impress? Donald Trump, who clearly now views the Prime Minister as an annoying international second-cousin, not a key strategic partner? The Israelis, who now reportedly view him as an ‘unreliable ally’?
Self-evidently it hasn’t impressed the Iranians or their terror networks, hence yesterday’s urgent warning to British nationals in Qatar to shelter in place, just prior to Iran’s retaliatory missile strikes.
Or the protesters who have taken to the streets, with their banners demanding we all stand with Iran and ‘on the right side of history’. It’s hardly going to impress our other global partners – and adversaries – who have been subject to the spectacle of Keir Starmer stumbling, fumbling and blundering as the Middle East exploded around him.
Most importantly of all, it’s only a matter of time before the British people realise they have a Prime Minister whose instinct is to cower, not take a stand, when the moment of crisis comes. And how in that moment, if they seek a leader, they will need to look elsewhere.