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Keir Starmer has not only taken the correct and popular position on Donald Trump’s Iran war, but he has also now forced his political and media opponents into reversing their support for it.
In the immediate aftermath of Trump launching his attack on Iran, Reform UK leader Nigel Farage condemned Starmer for refusing to send British forces into action, saying that it would be “worth” Britain getting involved and that “we should do all we can” to help US forces.
His Deputy, Richard Tice, agreed, saying that if Reform were in power “we would be helping the Americans and the Israelis in any way they saw appropriate”.
His message was also reiterated by his Reform UK colleague Nadhim Zahawi, who said that “whatever the US needs, we should make all of our assets available… We should join the bombing if needed.”
The Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch also took this gung-ho position, while mocking Starmer for not joining Trump’s assault.
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“Why is he asking our allies to do what we should be doing ourselves?” she told MPs last Wednesday at Prime Minister’s Questions.
“I say to Labour MPs that we are in this war whether they like it or not. What is the Prime Minister waiting for?”
She later went even further, accusing Starmer of only refusing to join the attack because he was frightened of Muslim voters, saying that the Prime Minister was “too scared to make foreign interventions for fear of upsetting a tiny section of the electorate.”
When Keir Starmer stuck to his position of blocking UK involvement anyway, he was also derided by the Conservative and Reform-supporting press.
In repeated front pages, Starmer was condemned for his “inaction” and defiance of the US President’s demands for Britain to join the war.
Yet as oil prices surged and the chaos in the Middle East spread, an already sceptical British public turned heavily against the war.
According to new polling conducted by the organisation More in Common, 74% of UK voters now say that British forces should either have no involvement in the war, or that they should merely respond defensively to it – exactly the position taken by Starmer.
And while the British press has sought to attack and belittle the Prime Minister for putting himself on the wrong side of Trump, the polling finds that most UK voters actually want him to stand up to the President.
According to the same poll 55% of British voters want Keir Starmer to prioritise “standing up to Trump”, compared to just 27% who say he should prioritise working alongside him.
The result of this wave of public opposition to Trump and his war is that it for the first time in a long time it is Starmer’s opponents who have had to back down, rather than him.
In the last 24 hours both Farage and Badenoch have U-turned on their previous support for Britain joining Trump’s war, with both even daring to suggest that they had never really backed joining it in the first place.
“There are differing opinions as to whether we should physically join the attacks,” Farage told reporters on Tuesday.
“I, as leader, am saying to you, if we can’t even defend Cyprus, let’s not get ourselves involved in another foreign war.”
He was joined by Badenoch, who told the BBC that “I haven’t said that we should have gone in with the US and with Iran. Although I do say that when it comes to the two sides, I will always be on the side of the US and Israel, not Iran. That doesn’t mean that we should join… that we should join those strikes.”
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Farage and Badenoch’s reversal on Iran should be a salutary lesson for the Labour Government.
In the past, under the guidance of Starmer’s previous chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney, Starmer too often gave into criticism from his political and media opponents on the right, even when his own position was broadly in line with public opinion.
On this occasion Starmer has taken both the correct and popular position and stuck to it despite relentless attacks from the right. The result is that it is now his opponents, rather than him, who is having to embark on a humiliating U-turn.
It is a lesson he and his Government should now learn from.