Chris ✆ 💯

Minimum wage rising 📈 State pension increasing 💷 Two child limit abolished 🏡 Child poverty falling 📉 Rights at work strengthened 💪🏻 Labour promised change. We are delivering change. theguardian.com/commentisfree/…

My monologue from today’s The Times at One with Andrew Neil @TimesRadio What’s worse? To be an embarrassment? Or an irrelevance? Well, what’s worse is to be both. How do I know? Because that’s what Britain is under Keir Starmer’s tender care as the most significant geopolitical events of recent times unfold in the Middle East.  An embarrassment and an irrelevance.  It’s what happens when you allow foreign and defence policy to be dictated by lawyers who came to prominence and riches on the international law circuit and who show little concern for the national interest.  Starmer’s default position is to do what they decree.    So, when the US/Israeli attacks on Iran began Saturday morning our PM was at pains to stress Britain was not in anyway part of the military action.  Not only that — though this he was not so keen to spell it out — he’d forbidden our most important ally from using UK bases for the assault.  He was at one, he said, with Donald Trump’s desire to stop the tyrants of Tehran from developing a nuclear bomb. He just didn’t will the means to stop it.  Was he for or against America’s latest exercise in regime change? He didn’t say.  Nor would his defence secretary. He drew the short straw and was sent into bat in the Sunday morning media round.  In a series of excruciating changes, including on this station, from which his reputation will not recover, John Healey refused to say, again and again, if the British government supported the attacks on Iran. Foreign secretary Yvette Cooper went thru the same farce this morning.  Well, it’s only the signal military action of our time. Why would you have an opinion? As Healey prevaricated, Iran had started to retaliate by attacking almost every Gulf State, most of them our allies as well as America’s.  Suddenly it triggered in Starmer’s brain that sitting on the fence was perhaps not the best option. Especially when it looked as if the Iranians were targeting our base in Cyprus too.  So the lawyers were consulted again, naturally. And, autocue re-scripted at their direction, Starmer appeared again at the prime ministerial podium to say the US could use our bases after all — provided it was only for defensive purposes.  Those of us without the benefit of a legal education and years of experience on the well-remunerated international law circuit are struggling to see the distinction.  The US and Israel were already pummelling Iranian missile sites because they were a threat to their allies in the region. Britain did not support that.  Now Britain has decided it’s OK to pummel them from our bases. Though we won’t be doing any pummelling ourselves. And we’re still not saying if we’re in favour of the pummelling.   Canada and Australia, both with centre-left governments, have backed US military action. Britain has not. But it hasn’t condemned it either. Colour me confused.  None of this is to argue for British support or British participation. I understand why we should be wary. But it is to argue we should know where our government stands. Yet we don’t. Hence the embarrassment and the irrelevance.  1/2