As the opening salvos of a possible third world war were fired across the Middle East, Britain’s once peerless navy was nowhere to be seen. The HMS Dragon, one of our ‘Daring-class’ air-defence destroyers, sat idle in Portsmouth for a week after a drone struck a British base in Cyprus, partly because MoD contractors dare not work out of hours.
It is unclear what the Tories and Reform thought was to be gained from rattling blunt sabres in support of this conflict
If only our politicians showed the same insouciance. Instead, Kemi Badenoch has been pictured sitting resolutely in a tank – that she managed to find one of the precious few in existence was an impressive feat. Badenoch then declared her support for the bombing of missile sites in Iran. Reform’s deputy leader, Richard Tice, called for the same if requested to do so by America or Israel. ‘Reform can be trusted to always stand rock solid with Israel,’ he posted on X, adding: ‘Unlike Labour who have abandoned Israel.’
It’s a curious line of attack. Why should the Prime Minister sign a blank cheque to Israel, even when it’s embarking on a war with no casus belli or likely outcomes that even vaguely align with British interests? A war that is strangling global oil supplies, threatens to topple the world economy and destabilise yet another Middle Eastern country is, predictably, not exactly a goer with voters already struggling with the cost of living. Just 15 per cent of Tory voters support Badenoch’s call for proactive strikes, according to YouGov. Reform voters are mildly more enthusiastic at 24 per cent, with the majority supporting defensive or retaliatory strikes only.
Meanwhile, the left have broadly fallen into the peacenik camp, in line with both their voters and the country. Keir Starmer has committed only to defensive strikes to protect British assets. Some 59 per cent of Labour voters agree with him. Yet Reform and the Tories have painted him as too lily-livered to enter the fray. They’ve also relished Trump’s mockery of Starmer for being ‘no Churchill’.
On Monday, Trump declared the war ‘very complete.’ Whether this meant the end of the beginning, or the beginning of the end, was unclear. At a press conference, a reporter asked: ‘Mr President, you’ve said the war is “very complete” but your defence secretary says “this is just the beginning”, so which is it?’ Trump responded: ‘Well, I think you could say both. It’s the beginning of building a new country.’
As of this week, that new country is being led by Mojtaba Khamenei, the late Ayatollah’s son, a 56-year-old widely regarded as more hawkish than his cautious, octogenarian, Shakespeare-loving father. Not exactly the ‘unconditional surrender’ Trump demanded last week, then.
It is unclear what the Tories and Reform thought was to be gained from rattling blunt sabres in support of this conflict. If the war continues and oil surpasses $150 a barrel, the resulting economic shock will be enormous. Reform, still innocent of government and free of original sin, will have needlessly opened itself up to a line of attack ahead of the next election. They’ll have accomplished nothing for Britain, apart from making the Green party’s Zack Polanski, a former breast enhancement hypnotist, who is admittedly dovish for all the wrong reasons, look like Kissinger.
A JL Partners poll conducted four days into the war showed Reform at 27 per cent, down four percentage points, while the Greens, at 14, rose by 5 percentage points, the largest gain for any party. Reform’s top brass seemed to belatedly realise the gulf between their enthusiasm for the war and their voters’ priorities. Robert Jenrick stepped up to the wicket, saying: ‘We are the party for working people, not drawn-out wars in faraway places.’ Nige Farage himself, who had previously come out in support of regime change, said on Tuesday: ‘There are differing opinions as to whether we should physically join the attacks. I, as leader, am saying to you, if we can’t even defend Cyprus, let’s not get ourselves involved in another foreign war.’ It is understood this is Reform’s official position, which means their deputy leader now has a delicate reverse-ferret to perform.
There seems to be a generational divide between the likes of Tice, 61, who haven’t updated their software beyond envisioning Britain as a participant in an interlinked clash of civilisations at home and abroad, and Jenrick, 44, who understands our problems are closer to home and far knottier than most are willing to admit. It has exposed a key vulnerability on the British right, battle-hardened by years of domestic culture wars: it should be careful of not confusing them with real wars.
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