dan linnaeus@DanLinnaeus
After egregious UK bungling on the Iran file under Starmer’s Labor government, Tim Shipman reported that a former adviser to Downing Street said, "The way we’ve behaved towards our allies in the last week means no one cares what we think and we have zero capacity to shape things".
The story pivots on two drivers. The Starmer government’s entrenched non-interventionists and their reliance on restricted readings of international law, which together blocked UK basing assistance to the US, and, more notably, Britain’s failure to position defensive assets in the region despite forewarning.
Downing Street’s paralysis was led by a familiar factional figure, UK Energy Secretary Ed Miliband. Miliband infamously led his Labor movement’s obstruction of then-Prime Minister David Cameron’s 2013 bid for parliamentary approval to join US strikes against the Assad regime after it employed chemical weapons against civilians.
Cameron’s defeat in the House of Commons is often credited with President Obama’s pivot away from military intervention in Syria. However, as a notable sidebar, if the British backdrop to Epic Fury that Shipman exposes in his Spectator account proves one thing about red lines and political will, it is that Obama no longer has Britain’s skirt to hide behind as an explanation.
Shipman’s account of how the UK was crippled into inaction by appointed zealots over exegeses of international law records a pivotal moment in Allied history. Attorney General Richard Hermer’s advice metastasized into de facto policing of the UK’s strategic imperatives.
This drew considerable ire, not only from its US partner but from key Middle East stakeholders who were livid that Britain failed at the most basic task of positioning assets in-theater to protect British residents, regional assets, and host allies.
Shipman writes: Jordan was "fucking furious," a former minister with friends in Amman says. "The Emiratis, Kuwaitis, and even the Canadians are all asking, 'What the fuck are you doing? Whose side are you on?'"
The piece, in its entirety, is a must-read as a timely account of alliance fractures spidering out across theaters under acute geostrategic stress. Since the events leading up to last Saturday’s strikes, the launch of the US Epic Fury and the Israeli Roaring Lion, there have been several notable developments.
Near-misses at RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus and UK bases in Bahrain and Qatar provided Starmer’s government with the "self-defense" justification required to escalate military support for operations against the Iranian regime. By Wednesday, The Telegraph reported that UK bases will host B-2 Spirit bombers at RAF Fairford and Diego Garcia, citing unnamed officials.
While Starmer maintains the UK is not joining "offensive" strikes, he has authorized the use of bases to destroy Iranian missiles "at source," including storage depots and launchers, to prevent further attacks on Gulf allies.
Accordingly, the narrative is tenuously shifting from one of ideologically entrenched British isolationism to a legalistic pivot, with the "Hermer Doctrine" leveraged as a bridge from obstruction to limited partnership. The Attorney General’s insistence that UK participation in any preemptive operation was inconsistent with international law, unless the UK came under imminent threat of an armed attack, has given way to the UK rejoining the fray without violating the PM's "religious belief" in international law.
Starmer appears to have found a way to overcome the Miliband led coalition in his cabinet while satisfying both his own quasi religio-juristic instincts and Allied needs by settling on the destruction of Iranian missile launchers as a defensive act to protect British personnel, British nationals and host nations under attack.
