LABOUR MPs are right to warn that the government is stumbling towards a rerun of the Iraq disaster of 2003 under Tony Blair.

For all Keir Starmer’s declarations that there will be no repeat of that war of aggression, his incremental capitulation to Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu’s own belligerence is leading to that end.

Blair pressed the Bush administration to bring its war plans within the scope of international law by seeking United Nations authorisation for his war. Yet when the chips were down, and it was clear that no such authorisation was forthcoming, the Labour government went to war anyway.

Today, Starmer affects concern about the legality of the US and Israeli strike on Iran, and deplores the lack of any obvious plan behind the attack.

Yet the next day he approves British involvement in… further strikes against Iran, which have now, by some legerdemain, become lawful.

He claims that British servicemen and women are at risk from Iran’s defensive measures, as if any regime in the world would not respond to such an onslaught.

There is a simple solution to that problem – close down British bases in the Middle East where they serve no legitimate purpose whatsoever and bring the troops home. Their presence is a component of imperialism’s military domination of the region.

There is a solution to the wider problem of Starmer’s policy too, which is the same policy Blair championed – absolute support for the alliance with Washington come what may.

Blair memorably said that sometimes a “blood price” had to be paid for Britain’s ties with the USA, the ties which allow British governments to posture as a great power.

That price was paid by hundreds of British soldiers in Iraq. The British people opposed that at the time and they are making their voices heard today – less than 30 per cent back the US-Israeli aggression.

Diane Abbott was therefore right to tell the Commons that “our constituents are not prepared to see this country dragged into another war of the nature of the Iraq war.” 

And Labour MP Abitsam Mohamed asked the correct question when she urged Starmer to explain what assurances there were that British involvement would “not turn into full-scale military involvement, as we saw in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya.”

With Starmer at the helm there can be no such assurances.  He may squirm and wriggle and verbalise his caveats, but as Trump plunges into a war without obvious end and declines to rule out “boots on the ground” in Iran, the dangers of this country being embroiled in an Iraq War Mark Two are real and urgent.

The simple solution here is to end the reactionary imperialist alliance with the USA and, as Jeremy Corbyn told MPs, “adopt a stance of trying to bring about an immediate ceasefire to prevent further dreadful loss of life and the danger of this escalating into a semi-global conflict.”

Time to go, Keir

Still grappling with the disastrous result for his government of the Gorton and Denton by-election, Keir Starmer told Labour MPs this week that “there is a mainstream majority in this country who neither want Nigel Farage or Zack Polanski as their prime minister.”

It is true that no party is anywhere near commanding majority voter support at present. But it is no less true that the “mainstream majority” is clear on one thing: they do not want Keir Starmer as Prime Minister for another day.

The sooner his audience in the Parliamentary Labour Party, and the wider labour movement beyond, grasps that and acts to impose a change, the sooner Labour and Britain can move on.