Starmer's moral descent continues as his government lies about the attack on Iran.
This is the worst possible time to have a moral coward running our country ...
Last night, as this site posted its first ever piece, the United States was bombing Iran. We live in a complex, dangerous world and there are no simple solutions to its enormous problems. Yet part of the problem is that we have allowed the world to drift into lawlessness. Whatever moral authority the West once claimed has been discredited by years of defending the indefensible.
Before I start, two things need saying—because I do not want to be misunderstood, either in my views or my intentions.
First: I recognise Israel’s right to self-defence. It is a country essentially surrounded by states that hate it and will, perhaps forever, live with existential peril. Any nation in that position has the right to safeguard its citizens.
Israel also enjoys enough Western security guarantees that it could have been governed by leaders whose primary responsibility was the welfare of their own people and the search for regional peace—because peace helps Israel too. Making friends of its enemies would be the ultimate defence.
Under Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel has moved far beyond any notion of self-defence. He is a dangerous lunatic, determined to drag the region to the brink of all-out war—emboldened, in part, because another dangerous lunatic stands beside him, urging ever more reckless action.
Second: Everyone understands that Iran cannot be allowed to possess a nuclear arsenal. The planet is perilous enough without handing the ultimate weapon to a theocracy that glorifies martyrdom. The fear of nuclear war that restrains the Western world is not shared by those who would call the atomic shelling of Tel Aviv “an act of faith”.
Iran is deeply unstable. Any one of its proxy groups might, after a coup or collapse, emerge as the new government. The prospect of an ISIS-like regime in Tehran with access to the bomb is terrifying.
That is why Iran must never obtain it. But there were ways other than war to prevent that outcome. Diplomatic means existed long before Netanyahu and Trump chose confrontation.
Let us not kid ourselves: Trump and Netanyahu chose this path; it was not forced upon them. Iran does not have the bomb. It remains years away from one. There was no imminent threat.
Trump set the fuse when he tore up the original Iran nuclear deal—negotiated by Obama alongside Europe and even reluctant partners. The agreement was working. Proposals existed to tighten it further: enriching nuclear materials outside Iran, offering civilian nuclear technology under strict inspection, a victory for diplomacy the world desperately needs.
Now all of that is gone. The United States and Israel have acted, and we all hold our breath. Neither country had been attacked; neither faced imminent danger. What they have done is a war crime.
The UN Charter permits self-defence; it does not allow pre-emptive strikes.
We know there was no immediate peril, so pretending this was necessary is playing a lethal game.
America must reckon with its own part in this.
Those who voted for Trump under the delusion that he had even a single principle, a coherent policy, or the temperament of a rational leader has had those illusions shattered—again.
Those in his party who, just last week, called on Congress to restrict his power to start wars, and who now twist themselves into pretzels to praise him for doing exactly that, must find a way to look in the mirror without seeing the fool staring back.
Israeli citizens who voted for Netanyahu, who continue to support him, must likewise reckon with the consequences of what they’ve enabled.
Do they truly believe that bombing Syria, Yemen, Lebanon, Iraq and now Iran has made Israel safer? Do they believe that cheering Netanyahu on as he reduces Gaza to rubble has delivered greater security?
Do they believe civilian lives only matter when they are Israeli lives?
I was amazed this past week to hear Western leaders suddenly declaring hospitals as sacred, and that attacking them is an act of unspeakable evil—because up until now, the Israeli government has told the world that hospitals in Gaza are legitimate targets.
At home, we have our own hypocrisy to confront.
Our leaders stand behind podiums, mouthing platitudes about international law, the protection of civilians, and a rules-based global order—while tacitly endorsing mass murder in Gaza, the demolition of diplomacy, and the world’s accelerating descent into anarchy.
This morning, the Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds did the media rounds to reassure us Britain had no part in the strike. Then, almost in the same breath, he attempted to justify it.
“We had proposed a diplomatic course of action,” he said, “as other European countries had done. The Iranians rejected that.”
This, of course, is a barefaced lie.
Iran did not reject diplomacy. It has been under attack for a week. Trump had promised on Friday to decide what to do “in a fortnight”—less than 24 hours later, the bombs were falling.
This was not a path we were forced down. It was a choice. Jonathan Reynolds sat before the country and lied to justify an act of international criminality.
I have no doubt that those around Starmer will defend this under the cloak of necessity. But he’s like Oliver Twist, standing before those two appalling men with his bloodstained hands held out, saying “Please sir, can I have some more?”
His government is tainted by what it allowed to happen in Gaza. It is now tainted by what it is allowing to happen in Iran. This isn’t over. It won’t end even if Iran’s government collapses or comes begging for peace to avoid total annihilation. This is another act of Western aggression that undermines the international order—one that gives cover to Russia, that lets Putin drag his heels on Ukraine, and laugh in the face of any Western claim to respect international law.
These leaders aren’t building a stable world. They aren’t defending the post-1945 order. They’ve stopped fighting for it. Truthfully, we stopped caring the day we invaded Iraq. What we’ve done, yet again, is broadcast to every nation on earth that it’s perfectly acceptable to attack your neighbour—as long as you have a half-convincing pretext.
International law is complicated. Global politics is complex. But those who keep reminding us of that are often the ones who’ve tied themselves in knots trying to justify hypocrisy. People who preach the rule of law while violating it always find themselves trapped in the tangle of their own lies.
Israel’s right to self-defence has been compared by some on the American right to “no retreat” laws, common in several states. But even in the most aggressive stand-your-ground jurisdictions, if you shoot a man who’s trying to break into your house, and then shoot him again while he’s fleeing into the garden, and a third time as he crawls away—you’ll probably be tried for murder.
If you’re in a dispute with your neighbour and you see him in a gun shop and then wait until he gets home and shoot him in his driveway, you won’t win a self-defence argument in court. Not in any system with a functioning legal apparatus.
And yet that’s what Jonathan Reynolds was defending on British television today.
We should no longer be giving this government the benefit of the doubt on these matters. This is the government Starmer wants to run. This is the leader he wants to be. A man who moralises about Ukraine while greenlighting war crimes elsewhere. A man so eager to please those two lunatics—Trump and Netanyahu—that he makes this country complicit in their bloodshed. Complicit in the collapse of the international order. Complicit in the death of any moral authority the West ever claimed to have.
I left the Labour Party long ago because it was run by a man who thought himself decent, and whose illegal war killed 500,000 Iraqi civilians.
Starmer may have more blood on his hands before this is over.
Because we don’t know where this ends. We don’t know if it ends. But I do know this: this is the worst possible moment for this country—my country—to be led by a coward. A man too scared to speak the truth. A man too frightened of the tabloids and the dregs of the far right to call evil by its name.
A man who has emboldened those very rats I wrote about yesterday.
This could have been a moment when Europe spoke with one voice. When Britain stood with our neighbours, not just in geography but in principle. But Starmer has ensured we cannot speak with that voice. He has tied us to two warmongers and further dragged Labour into moral ruin.
Jonathan Reynolds won’t be the last MP to go on television and lie. But the rot starts from the top.
The Supreme Leader in Iran is no innocent. Neither is the madman in the White House. The arch-criminal is Netanyahu—the bloodthirsty warmonger. Starmer may only be their fool, but that makes him no less dangerous.
Because unlike them, he knows better. He’s not a gangster. He’s not a madman. He’s a former human rights lawyer. That makes his moral descent even more appalling.
To paraphrase The West Wing: Starmer isn’t Satan. He’s the guy who runs into the 7-11 to get Satan a pack of cigarettes.
Today, I’m ashamed to have him as our country’s leader.
I’m ashamed of this Prime Minister, and of this government. Not for the first time. Not for the last.
But I feel it deeply today watching Reynolds lie and knowing how dangerous that lie is—and what destruction it might yet unleash upon a teetering system of international rules which has already taken a hammering.