by Rob Marchant
First, let’s get one thing clear. Those who, in the last couple of weeks, have crowed that Starmer is a bureaucrat standing on ceremony, he is weak, he has broken the Special Relationship, or a hundred other criticisms on Iran, could do with a bit of calm reflection.
The Special Relationship, such as it ever was, was broken when Trump made loud plans to annex part of another NATO state and insultingly pretended that our troops had been gun-shy in joint theatres of war. It was certainly broken when he made it abundantly clear at Munich, that Europe needed to plough its own furrow when it came to mutual defence, indeed, that Europe was the enemy, not an ally.
The US has plunged itself, and the world, into an economically-destabilising conflict in Iran, apparently with very little anticipation of impacts. While we can all be delighted with the decapitation strategy and the just desserts meted out to evil men, if a decent endgame is not identified sharpish, it will have been an entirely Pyrrhic victory”.
If the Allies were poorly-prepared for the aftermath of Iraq, then this is a hundred times worse. There appears to be no plan for more than a few days ahead: financial markets go crazy; insurers and suppliers claim force majeure; all the while, thousands of expats are stranded in danger-zones in the Middle East.
Worst of all, one suspects that, even though a key ally is disabled, on balance, Vladimir Putin is secretly delighted at the chaos being created in the West. Especially now oil sanctions on his klepto-state have at least partially been lifted. This alone is enough to indicate the level of bad which is likely to follow.
It is not just in Parliament Starmer has got it right, making mincemeat of Badenoch’s pro-American bluster at both last Monday’s Iran debate and PMQs. He is on the side of the British people, in what might accurately be described as his “Love Actually” moment: a PM robustly standing up for Britain against a bullying US president.
Has he made mistakes? Yes. The nebulous, lawyerly concept of international law should not prevent us from making moral judgements on a horrific regime. He also needs to pull his finger out on increasing defence spending, yesterday, because Britain’s non-involvement in this conflict does not excuse it from wider defence responsibilities for Europe. And this may well be needed sooner than he thinks, given Russia’s determination to poke at its neighbours’ boundaries, and not just in Ukraine.
His approach, however, has been level-headed: neither Spanish PM Pedro Sánchez’s pitiful “no war” stance, standing for nothing, nor Tony Blair’s “transatlantic solidarity, right or wrong” stance. Helping where possible, but not putting British troops in harm’s way, he has done what Wilson did for Britain on Vietnam and kept us out of a wrong-headed war, for the moment at least (Wilson, too, had his critics at the time; they are silent now).
In short, despite his many failings, we can all be rather glad it is Starmer in charge at this time of crisis, and not just because there is currently no credible challenger in his own party. Badenoch, Farage, Davey and Polanski would all have been terrible leaders for Britain right now, each for different reasons, either blundering into ill-planned war or fully turning their backs on allies for a pacifist/isolationist peace.
And despite the breathless “Starmer just clinging on” headlines of recent weeks, the public and a lot of the commentariat, deep down, know he is the only option, too.
Rob Marchant is an activist and former Labour party manager who blogs at The Centre Left
Tags: Iran, Rob Marchant, Starmer, Trump, war
