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Opinion

Speak The Truth

22 Jun 2025 5 minute read
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer picks up UK US trade deal papers dropped by US President Donald Trump. Photo Stefan Rousseau/PA Wire

Ben Wildsmith

If you need any confirmation of the UK’s place in the world, consider David Lammy’s remarks last week about Donald Trump’s intentions regarding the Israeli war on Iran.

‘A window now exists to achieve a diplomatic solution, something the UK has called for since the start of this conflict.’

That was on Friday, so less of a window than an arrow slit, as it turned out.

Not that the UK is alone in its irrelevance. Lammy was joined by his French and German counterparts for talks with Iran on Friday. Trump’s response to that was to tell journalists, ‘Nah, they didn’t help, Iran doesn’t want to speak to Europe. They want to speak to us. Europe is not going to be able to help on this one.’

So, the two-week space for negotiations that Trump teased earlier in the day was a unilateral US deception that wasn’t shared with European allies.

As Keir Starmer scrabbled round Trump’s feet, picking up papers for a supposed trade deal, he was out of the loop and disregarded on the real matters of state.

Bright side

On Sunday, after America had dropped six ‘bunker-buster’ bombs and 30 Tomahawk missiles on Iran’s nuclear facilities, the UK government was looking on the bright side. Business Secretary, Jonathan Reynolds, told the BBC, ‘I wanted a different way to obtain this, but I cannot pretend to you that the prevention of Iran having a nuclear weapon is anything other than [in] the interests of this country. This is very different to what we saw with the invasion of Iraq … I think stability for the region would come about through an agreement where Iran would acknowledge that, because of its behaviour, no country in that theatre or the wider world would be able to countenance it having nuclear weapons.’

It is interesting to note the reference to the Iraq War here. Those in the Labour government who were around in 2003 are experiencing painful déjà vu as events move around them that could lead to their undoing.

Reynolds found himself dancing on the head of a pin when questioned by LBC’s Lewis Goodall.

The UK, he confirmed, had sought de-escalation and a diplomatic solution but now that Iran had been bombed it welcomed that outcome.

UK forces had not been involved and he wouldn’t speculate on whether they would have been if America had requested them. Now, he was ‘very clear’ that missile attacks on Israel should stop so that there is no need for further ‘preventative action’.

The faction that has gained supremacy in the Labour Party has never really understood why people were so upset about the Iraq War.  The endless ‘third way’ doublespeak that facilitated the Blair government in entrenching Thatcherite economics at the expense of post-industrial Britain just didn’t work when it came to the wholescale slaughter of Iraqis and the wider mayhem that provoked.

Restraint

The UK represented by our government is without moral content. Whilst the Blair version was at least content to own its role as the bully’s mate, Starmer’s administration seeks to present itself as a force for restraint and peace whilst failing to demand either from the nations that count.

Would it not be liberating and refreshing to live in a nation that could look at circumstances like these and give voice to the obvious facts that all of us can see? Israel is indisputably running a fully-functional secret nuclear programme which no international body is allowed to inspect. Israel is expanding its territory into the West Bank, Syria, and Lebanon. Israel assassinated eight Iranian officials in diplomatic premises in Damascus. Israel has fired first in each of the exchanges of missiles with Iran.

Iran is a sickeningly repressive regime, and it very clearly has hostile intent towards Israel. For our government, however, to behave as if it is the primary threat to humanity in the region, whilst ignoring all of the above, and the ongoing carnage in Gaza, is cruelly absurd.

Busted flush

The UK is a busted flush on the international stage. It does as it is told whilst clinging to a fantasy of influence that long ago evaporated. It is no longer even required to throw a veil of old-world respectability over American belligerence as it did over Iraq.

If Cymru is to signal its distinctness next year by electing a Plaid Cymru-led government, then we should find the independence of spirit that has characterised the Irish response to events in the Middle East.

We have no power, that is the bald truth of it. Instead, we should recapture our dignity and be a nation that speaks the truth.


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Amir
Amir
26 days ago

Time to let USA go along with their new best friends: the Zionists. Best for UK to stay out of this cesspit. But they won’t.

Mab Meirion
Mab Meirion
26 days ago

The Lone Ranger and Tonto were riding down the line…

Fixing no ones troubles but acting like thing’s is just fine…’

@Lemmy not Lammy

Mab Meirion
Mab Meirion
25 days ago
Reply to  Mab Meirion

Every Picture Tells a Story…

Twmp did that on purpose…

Amphora: an empty vessel that can’t stand up by its self…

We had a bomb like that, two in fact Tallboy and Grand Slam, ‘superior to the yank and carried on a Lancaster…apart from control surfaces on the fins…

What would it do to the San Andreas Fault I wonder…

Mab Meirion
Mab Meirion
23 days ago
Reply to  Mab Meirion

12 F-35 bought to drop little ‘buckets of sunshine’ on a European battlefield…the attention span of the Masters of War is measured in dollars, Jeff you have some reading to do, if you want a book list just ask…a lot to ‘grapple’ with…

Maesglas
Maesglas
25 days ago

Well said Ben. Starmer shows us, in this as with many other issues, he is the “anything goes” PM. Delusion, evasion, and obfuscation from our government who will roll over to anything that Trump says. This is the very time we need a leader with moral substance ready to stand against sleepwalking into global conflict and prevent war.

Steve D.
Steve D.
25 days ago

Bombs don’t get what you want in the Middle East – they just cause more death and destruction in the future. The Americans just don’t see it and believe they can just force their views on anyone. Yes, the nuclear capabilities of Iran may be smashed now but you can bet your arse the Iranians will go hell for broke to develop a bomb now. As for the UK’s role – no one gives a monkeys. For Cymru in an independent future our voice would be a far stronger one as part of a united European voice. Europeans together have… Read more »

John Ellis
John Ellis
25 days ago

A bit of credit to Trump, I suppose, because, being the sort of ghoul that he is, he has no inhibitions about saying it as he sees it.

Whereas his predecessors in the White House almost certainly thought pretty much the same as Trump, but they were just too genteel and courteous to say it out loud!

Amir
Amir
25 days ago
Reply to  John Ellis

I walking back to my hotel with my colleagues in London as few years ago. A man starting shouting racial abuse at me. My colleague said , “he is just saying out loud what other people really think about you”. I hate racists and those that admire them.

John Ellis
John Ellis
25 days ago
Reply to  Amir

If you’ve formed the notion that I’d number myself among Trump’s admirers, you could hardly be further from the truth!

Amir
Amir
25 days ago
Reply to  John Ellis

Then why give him any credit? He is a racist, misogynistic sociopath.

John Ellis
John Ellis
25 days ago
Reply to  Amir

I don’t see it as ‘credit’. Here at Westminster we’ve recently had a succession of plausible and honey-tongued dissemblers in positions of power. We even, briefly, had one of that sort in Wales.

Trump is at least unambiguous: he doesn’t hide his inclination to govern as a populist autocrat, very much in the mould of mid-20th century European fascist leaders. At least, with him, we know what manner of man he is.

Whereas with, say, Johnson here, most voters really didn’t. Same goes for Gething!

Amir
Amir
25 days ago
Reply to  John Ellis

He is ambiguous. He said there will a 2 week pause, then measured his stick and realised it had got smaller so he brought the attack forward.

John Ellis
John Ellis
24 days ago
Reply to  Amir

No argument from me about that. He’s utterly chaotic and wholly self-serving in all that he does. But at least he’s openly and shamelessly venal.

The politicians whom I despise the most are those who purport to have ethical principles and then, once in power, demonstrate that they don’t. And it seems to me that there are rather too many of that sort in contemporary British politics.

Mab Meirion
Mab Meirion
25 days ago
Reply to  John Ellis

He is demented, filtering his own grotesque being through the prism of the likes of Steve Miller and Bannon and the rest, John he has never turned a cheek in his life (beyond a mistress)…

These are forces beyond the likes of an Arch Oil Man in modern times….since the last burning at the stake…a ‘fight to the death’

Mab Meirion
Mab Meirion
25 days ago
Reply to  Amir

You ask a certain group why they emigrated to our Coast, purely to get away from you and yours Amir is the answer every time…

Ian Michael Williams
Ian Michael Williams
25 days ago

If you wish to see the history of the Middle East I suggest you read the book…THE LINE IN THE SAND? It goes to the decisions of the UK v France and is a brilliant in regards to the dash for oil and dirty deeds!!!

Mab Meirion
Mab Meirion
25 days ago

Chosen People…Matthew 22:14 if you need help ask the leader of the Welsh Tories…

The Catlicks, when I got away from them age 16 I chose myself and I’ve been true to myself to this day…

Stop coming out with drivel…

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