Kowtowing to US foreign policy in Iraq and Afghanistan had disastrous consequences. Why are leaders making the same mistake all over again?
H
ere is the sort of analysis you’re being served up by our esteemed commentariat. Keir Starmer’s positioning on the Iran war, we are told, reveals a prime minister with no political compass. True, but talk about burying the lede. The story here is not Starmer’s lack of political acumen. British involvement in the Iran war is not a policy question on which reasonable people might disagree, like raising a tax here or spending a bit more money there. This is a grave crime.
Yet all the pressure on Starmer seems to arrive from one direction. He “should have backed America from the very beginning”, declares Tony Blair, apparently eager for his successor to emulate his own record of dragging Britain into US-led catastrophes widely condemned as illegal. Donald Trump’s sidekick Nigel Farage, Tory leader Kemi Badenoch and the rightwing press make much the same complaint.
These conservative “patriots” urged us to “take back control” from Brussels, but demand Britain acts as Trump’s poodle. That this is not only politically permissible but a respectable mainstream position tells a grim story. Despite having dragged this country into one violent catastrophe after another, our political and media elites appear incapable of learning a single lesson.
