Starmer Stumbles

It was one thing for Keir Starmer, Britain’s enfeebled prime minister, to decline to join in the attack on Iran, but quite another to refuse to allow the U.S. to launch air strikes on the Islamic Republic from RAF Fairford in the U.K. or Diego Garcia, the Anglo-American base in the Chagos archipelago.  President Trump commented that the refusal was unlike anything that had “happened between our countries before.” That may or may not be accurate (over the years, the “special relationship” has been spikier than is often imagined), but the president was right to be angry.

The reason Starmer gave for the refusal rested, he claimed, on “international law.” International law is a far shakier construction, legally, morally, and in reality, than its advocates like to accept. But it is a construction that Starmer turned into a pillar of his successful legal career. Doubtless the way that is so often weaponized against the West only adds to its appeal to him.

A curious interpretation of international law lies, Starmer says, at the basis of his extraordinary decision to hand over the Chagos archipelago to faraway Mauritius, and then pay to lease back Diego Garcia, the largest of those islands — a decision that, for reasons that have been underlined in the last couple of days, the White House should do everything in its power to block.

The response to the attacks by Germany’s Chancellor Merz showed a far greater appreciation of reality. He declined to come to any verdict on the question of international law but commented instead that this “was not the moment to lecture our partners and allies. Despite our reservations, we share many of their objectives.”

Merz added that “international law classifications will have little effect” on what is going on, “especially if they remain largely without consequence,” a phenomenon that Iran’s theocratic revolutionaries have appreciated for nearly half a century. Any limited respect that this rogue state has ever shown for international law has been purely tactical and quickly disappears whenever convenient.

Starmer has now partly reversed course, saying that he had taken the decision to accept the U.S. request to use British bases as a point for launching strikes, but only for the “specific and limited defensive purpose” of preventing “Iran firing missiles across the region, killing civilians, putting British lives at risk [he estimated that around 200,000 were in the region] and hitting countries that have not been involved.”

This, the British government maintains, is in accord with international law as it is assisting in the defense (from Iranian attack) of allied countries. This idea seems, in Starmer’s view, capable of being stretched further. The French, British, and Germans have issued a statement saying that they “would take steps to defend our interests and those of our allies in the region, potentially through enabling necessary and proportionate defensive action to destroy Iran’s capability to fire missiles and drones at their source.”

One drone has already hit a British base in Cyprus.

Could one reason for Starmer’s hesitation be the recent by-election (special election) result in Greater Manchester?

You might very well think that, but I couldn’t possibly comment.

In that contest his party lost a once solid Labour seat to the increasingly radical Green Party, which was more than willing to play the sectarian card. The Greens’ deputy leader, Mothin Ali, attended a rally over the weekend in London that was sufficiently helpful to the Tehran regime to be  shown on Iranian state TV. After the October 7 massacres in Israel, Ali supported the right of “indigenous people to fight back.”

Meanwhile, the Greens’ leader Zack Polanski has argued that the attacks on Iran are “illegal, unprovoked and brutal. . . . [They show] once again that the USA and Israel are rogue states. . . . The UK must end our cozy relationship with the USA and our ongoing support for Israel.”

Polanski knows what he is doing. Ali knows what he is doing. Does Starmer?