Britain cannot become embroiled in a war “without a clear end point”, a former senior Nato commander has said, as he defended Keir Starmer after Donald Trump’s jibes that he was “not Winston Churchill”.
Trump was “another American president who had launched a war of choice,” said Gen Sir Richard Shirreff, as a minister insisted that the UK prime minister had acted “with a cool head” by not allowing British bases to be used for initial strikes.
The US president launched a deeply personal attack on Starmer over his refusal to let Washington launch initial strikes on Iran from British bases, telling reporters on Tuesday in the White House: “This is not Winston Churchill that we’re dealing with.”
In his latest extraordinary salvo, Trump said he was not happy with the UK even though Starmer eventually agreed the US could use the Diego Garcia military base in the Chagos Islands for strikes on Iranian missile facilities.
Asked in a series of interviews on Wednesday morning about Trump’s comments, the chief secretary to the Treasury, James Murray, said: “The prime minister took the decision he did in the national interest.
“He’s approached this with a cool head, with a real clarity of purpose, with a real focus and a determination to do the right thing for the British people.”
Shirreff, who was Nato’s deputy supreme allied commander Europe, was among those who supported Downing Street’s approach, saying: “Britain has to do what is right for Britain.
“There is absolutely a case for getting involved but it should not get involved in any shape or form with an operation where the end stage has not been made clear, there is not a clear strategy and yet again where we have an American president who has launched a war of choice with no clear understanding of how this thing is going to end,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
“We have been here before with Iraq in 2004 and we don’t want to be going back again into a situation like that.”
However, opposition politicians on the right in Britain seized on Trump’s attack, with the Conservatives claiming that the prime minister’s stance had made it more difficult to protect the UK’s national interest.
The shadow chancellor, Mel Stride, told Fox News: “The takeaway of all of this is that in a very uncertain and dangerous world allies matter, and no ally matters more to our country than the United States.
“To have ended up in a situation because of the way the prime minster has played support to the US around Iran, where Donald Trump is really questioning the relationship he has with us, is a serious situation.”
Stride also suggested that the time it was taking for a British warship to reach the seas near RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus would also cause the Cypriot government to question the role of having a British military presence on the island.
The prime minister said this week that HMS Dragon, a Type 45 Destroyer, was being sent to the region as the US-Israel war with Iran continues. A suspected Iranian drone hit the British base at Akrotiti overnight on Sunday, causing no casualties and what the Ministry of Defence described as “minimal damage”.
Two more drones heading for Akrotiri were intercepted on Monday, according to the Cypriot government, while there was also a fresh alert on Wednesday morning.
However, the British government has been accused of being caught unprepared amid reports that the ship’s departure had been delayed and that a French vessel would reach the area first to carry out similar defensive operations.
Murray told GB News: “HMS Dragon and Wildcat helicopters are going to be out there as soon as possible, but they build on the defensive capability that we’ve been increasing in recent weeks.”
Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: theguardian.com
