Has Starmer lost control of his cabinet over Trump and Iran?

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0:32This is a Global Player original podcast. Is it true that you wanted on Friday to give Americans a precautionary permission in the event of Iranian reprisals, choose British bases for defensive action, but had your mind changed by Ed Miliband and other members of your cabinet? Let me be really clear about this. no request from the US came in the specific terms that we acceded until Saturday afternoon Saturday afternoon well just hit me out and therefore on Friday there was no concrete decision to be made the decision if the story wasn't true the obvious response from the prime Minister would have been, this is absolute nonsense and totally unfounded.

1:25That's not what Keir Starmer said. The allegation is, is that Keir Starmer went into the Iran crisis wanting to do one thing, but was bullied, forced by his cabinet to do another. Who is really in charge of this government and our foreign policy? Welcome to the News Agents.

1:49The News Agents. It's John. It's Lewis. And we have been listening to Keir Starmer for the last half an hour, giving a kind of broad tour de horizon of the whole of the conflict and what it means for getting people back from the Gulf and how long this might go on and what it's going to do economically and all the rest of it. But the key questions around what is happening are political, about who's in charge of the government and whether we've let down some of our allies in the region. Yeah, so this all comes down to a piece which has been published by Tim Shipman, who's the political editor of The Spectator.

2:23All week, we have been discussing and theorising and speculating on exactly how it might be that Trump has decided to do what he's done now. And we've also been theorising and speculating on exactly why the British government under Keir Starmer has got to the position that he got to, which has been a slightly sort of complicated position, which was initially at the weekend saying Britain would have no part in any of this. But by the time you get to Sunday, allowing the Americans to use British bases and military assets in the region in self-defence to defend American troops, British troops, civilians and our allies.

3:02We've all thought, or at least it has been widely assumed, that this has come from Starmer himself, partly because of his deep attachment to international law. Westminster has been rocked, really, by a piece from Tim Shipman, who has a rather different account as to how Starmer has got to where he's got to, which paints a picture of a prime minister that is rather less decisive and has rather less authority and is being bounced by his own cabinet, as we've said at the top there. So Shipman has said that Keir Starmer was, in fact, initially overruled by his own cabinet during a National Security Council discussion about whether the US could use British bases in the Iranian operation.

3:45Starmer's position was that he didn't want Britain directly joining the strikes, but he was open to allowing the US to use British bases for operations linked to the conflict, and he wanted that to basically be the case as of Friday. That is the position, of course, he got to as of Sunday. But Shipman is saying that several senior ministers at the end of last week blocked that move, most notably Ed Miliband, the Energy Secretary, Rachel Reeves, the Chancellor, and Yvette Cooper, the Foreign Secretary, citing legal concerns, but also political concerns, including potential domestic political fallout for being seen to back Donald Trump.

4:26Now, in the end, of course, it is the case that we got to that position, that the US could use those bases in a defensive manner on Sunday. But it looks that there was a significant delay, not because of Starmer himself, but basically because he was being pushed around by his own cabinet. Yeah, and that is a remarkable story, because there is the backstory of Ed Miliband, who had served in the Blair and Brown governments, who had become leader of the opposition. And of course, when Bashar al-Assad had used chemical weapons in Syria and there was a vote in the Commons over whether to support taking military action because he had used chemical weapons, Ed Miliband led the opposition to say no.

5:08that forced David Cameron's hand and in turn forced Obama's hand and caused absolute fury in Washington that Britain had let America down at a crucial time like this. And here we see, according to Shipman, Ed Miliband playing a crucial role again. And there's a line that I liked in the piece which says, Security sources are clear that Miliband in particular took a petulant, pacifist, legalistic and very political approach, questioning why the UK should support the US. And it does suggest, therefore, that Ed Miliband is the person who is in charge. And I tell you, Lewis, one of the things that I've heard from a number of different people, political opponents and supporters, is that Ed Miliband is the most effective cabinet minister in the government.

6:02he knows how to make the department he's in work for himself but also i've heard from you know the people who oppose him that he's absolutely freaking nuts that his policies are completely wrong that net zero is absolutely bonkers but he is still the most effective minister he's not nuts though i mean he's not no no but that's what his opponents are saying exactly i'm intrigued by this kind of i mean like look ed milliband's not everyone's cup of tea as the 2015 election showed but i mean uh as you said john i'm just going to decide this but as you say i think one of the things his opponents dislike most about him is that he's so effective.

6:33Yes, exactly. That's what I mean. Yeah, and sort of caricature him somewhat. I mean, look, I mean, what is certainly true, as you say, is that Miliband has got a long history now of thwarting American foreign policy interventions under different presidents. Of course, as you say, it was under Obama in 2013 when Cameron wanted those strikes. Cameron and Obama wanted those strikes in Syria and Ed Miliband led the charge against them at the time, which eventually led to Obama not acting. So, you know, he's got some form on this. It feels as if it could be credible and true. I think this is a funny one in a sense.

7:03I mean, in a sense that you could argue that if that's the position that we got to in the end anyway, does it really matter if the cabinet delayed it by a couple of days? I think what you can say is that perhaps it shows that Starmer's personal authority is pretty weak, if it is true, because I can't quite think of another prime minister in a sort of war adjacent situation, let's put it that way, who would have been able to be basically bullied by his cabinet colleagues. Maybe that's too strong a word, but certainly dissuaded by his cabinet colleagues, forced his hand forced by his cabinet colleagues to not do what in his assessment, if this is true, was important for British national security.

7:49I think we can certainly say that. I think it is almost a sort of mirror image of the moments when Starmer has appeared not to have any authority over the parliamentary Labour Party. In this case, again, it is his cabinet. Yes, we do have cabinet government. That's all important and so on. But on these matters of war and peace, generally, particularly in recent years, there has been great latitude for prime ministers to get their way. I think that this is an area where Starmer is damned if he does and damned if he doesn't because if you go back to Blair and the criticism made of sofa government that I think a former cabinet secretary said you know it was all far too informal people would meet in Blair's study they would decide the policy and you'd get to cabinet and although Robin Cook and Claire Short might object you know Blair had already made the decision about what was going to happen the same was said of thatcher as well that it wasn't really a cabinet thatcher decided what was what and the rest of the cabinet fell in beside her and maybe what we've got at the moment is proper cabinet government where there is a discussion i mean it was the national security council i think there was meeting but you know that there's proper discussion and they reach a conclusion well i think i think basically what we're talking about here and i think it does tell us something about starmer's authority i'm not sure it tells us that much about whether the position is is right or wrong because as I say, what we're basically talking about is timing.

9:05What Starmacly wanted to do is get to the defence of the idea that the Americans could use the bases defensively ahead of the point that the Americans actually asked for it because he presumably felt that that would buy a little more currency with Trump and with the White House rather than them having to come to us and ask for it. He was trying to get ahead of it. Clearly, the Cabinet, for whatever reason, didn't want to do that. They wanted to basically put a bit more clear water between the UK and the US. But we did end up, for good or ill, in the same position. I mean, you could argue we've kind of ended up in the worst of all worlds, where we sort of piss Trump off the Iranians haters as well.

9:39But I mean, you know, but nonetheless, that is the position that we're in. Yeah, I think what's interesting is that this story from Shipman, and I would say just a word or two about Tim Shipman, because I think if it had been another political journalist who was less well known, you might have just thought, oh, well, quite interesting. But I mean, I wonder how good the sourcing is. And Shipman, over a long period of time, has had bloody good sources for his stories when he was at the Sunday Times and chronicling the psychodrama of Brexit and now with Labour in power. So I think it would be much easier for Starmer to say, oh, this is all bollocks if it hadn't been Shipman.

10:14The approach is this is all bollocks. You know, it's a cabinet discussion. A decision was reached. That's all there is to see. What makes it so much worse is the fact that you've had complaints now from allies that Britain has been asleep at the wheel from the UAE, from Cyprus, from Bahrain. And that feeds into the shipment story. And indeed, it is on this question about Britain being MIA for our allies that I think Starmer got most heat and was perhaps most uncomfortable during that press conference in Downing Street this afternoon. Prime Minister, Cyprus, Bahrain, United Arab Emirates and others are being critical of the speed of our response.

10:55Have we let our allies and our own people down in the Middle East? We've still got a warship sitting in Portsmouth. You'll have heard me say a moment ago, we started pre-deploying in January and February our assets to the region to make sure that we had the capability that we needed there. That wasn't an isolated set of decisions. It was done in conjunction with the US, in conjunction with our allies. And we're bolstering that again. And therefore, I can say we're doing everything and have done everything we can at speed to make sure that we are properly protecting our citizens, which is my number one concern.

11:32And that's why it's very important that I set out the pre-deployment measures that we took. I actually think that in terms of questions for the government to answer, I think this question about British military preparedness is a far more serious one. Because we've got a situation where, according to the Shipman reporting, looking at the timeline, it was back as far back as February the 11th that the US requested the use of our base on Diego Garcia and RAF Fairford for offensive strikes on Iran. So what that that's going on for nearly a month ago now. So the UK government clearly knew that there was at the very least a strong possibility that something was coming.

12:12And yet we find ourselves in, let's be honest, a pretty internationally embarrassing situation of our best ship, which could be being deployed to protect a British military base in Cyprus, which we are internationally legally duty bound to protect. Where is it? Is it in Cyprus? No. Is it in the Mediterranean? No. It's still in Portsmouth. And it's not even going to leave Portsmouth for a couple of days and not arrive there until, I think, next week. Cue, I think, some pretty righteous indignation from the Cypriot High Commissioner and the Cypriot Prime Minister. Embarrassment for the UK that the French are sending their aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle.

12:51It's already on the way to the Mediterranean. John Healy, the Defence Secretary, having to be dispatched to Cyprus to assure our allies that, you know, we will be there to protect them. But, yeah, I think the questions around British military preparedness and potentially being asleep at the wheel on this are actually way more serious for the government than questions of cabinet splits, which ultimately can always be denied or brushed aside. And it's also, we're not an empire anymore. We're not an imperial power anymore. We are a middle-ranking state, but we still have a permanent seat on the Security Council.

13:23We are a nuclear power. And we've got a big military. And we've got a big military. And it just makes us look so feeble or enfeebled that we haven't been able to do more in the region. And that doesn't mean you are bombing Iranian commanders or bombing government buildings or doing all those things that, you know, Keir Starmer has rightly raised questions about. But it just makes the British response somehow look kind of so insipid and weak that it doesn't quite kind of relate to the power that Britain really has. And it just makes us look really kind of third division in all of this. Well, and also, I mean, there are, you know, there are potential longer term consequences, right?

14:09I mean, what's going on in Iran is just part of a greater game for strategic influence in the Middle East. It's not just Cyprus, with whom we've had this, you know, six decade military relationship in terms of the bases that we have there. But it looks like allies in the Gulf overall are deeply perplexed. Times has been told that Bahrain and the UAE have expressed their concerns about our response to the conflict. One Western official said the proposal to send the Dragon, which is our ship, we're going to send HMS Dragon, did not even cross the desk of the chief of the defence staff until 9.30am on Tuesday, four days after the war started and nearly two days after RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus was hit by a drone strike.

14:53He then passed a proposal to ministers and a decision was made shortly after that. Gulf nations, including the UAE, also angered by the delay in giving the US permission to use joint bases, including Diego Garcia. Look, I mean, you know, I think we've both been in agreement all week. I am not surprised, whatever, that Keir Starmer has made the decision that he has. I think there's been far too much sort of bellicosity in the British press and then across much of British politics. I think there was almost no proper scrutiny or critical thinking about what Trump wants to do and what he's trying to do.

15:28They're not really listening to him. They're treating it like a normal US president with a normal sort of set of objectives. None of that is there. There should be far more searching questions, as we said earlier in the week as well. Blaming Starmer for ruining the quote unquote special relationship is a bit rich when you consider everything that Donald Trump has done to demean and damage and degrade the special relationship. but that can all be true at the same time as there'd be proper questions for Starmer about the response that the British government has got to and when they got to it and the potential strategic damage of not being sufficiently and adequately prepared and therefore our allies when they needed us and that has a potential long-term consequence because you know who is constantly looking for influence in that region Russia is China is if the countries in that region don't feel that we and the wider west are reliable security partners then they'll go elsewhere and it does look like we are playing catch-up and i think that military chiefs and former commanders will be just kind of tearing their hair out to see britain in this position where you know you make a big statement about hms dragon going but it's kind of two weeks too late and it won't you know and as you say it's still alongside in portsmouth harbour being loaded up with provisions before it heads off to the mediterranean and you know this is not britain ruling the waves you know rule britannia it's not even taming the waves it's not even on the waves at the moment it's in port alongside on the quayside and hasn't even left yet and just the dynamic of that the the message it sends out it says that britain is not a major power in the region it suggests that britain is dragging its heels that britain is slow that's really not great just one other thing in parentheses just talking to a few sort of labor people this morning who are pretty tight-lipped i'll be honest in terms of what's going on at the nac they won't give much away and part of the reason they won't give much away is i think there is a sense of some fury that the nsc details have leaked yeah i mean you know someone said to me it is absolutely outrageous that so-called security sources are leaking details of meetings at the National Security Council and briefing against the Cabinet.

17:38That used to be considered a real scandal. Indeed, the last time NNC leaked was April 2019, when the discussion was on, you know, a much less important question of Huawei's involvement in UK 5G. I mean, Theresa May ordered a full inquiry. It ultimately led to the sacking of Gavin Williamson, who was then the Defence Secretary. So no one's really talking about this, but actually the fact that this has leaked, and look, we're journalists, we're never against leaks, But it is an actual important subplot of this whole thing. And Labour people are, I think, pretty furious about it. The corrosion that you talk about there of this privacy of meetings and the sanctity of those meetings.

18:17And you just think about what's gone on with the removal of the last cabinet secretary, Chris Wormald, and the briefings that went on against him and the leaking about, you know, for and against Antonio Romeo becoming the new cabinet secretary. It's just like everywhere in government. It's that you get your position on social media and that is what's going to decide an outcome if you can fight it out on social media. And so the idea I was always struck, actually, you know, when there were leaks, how rare it was that secret government stuff leaks out. And now it seems, you know, you have a discussion on something critical, like what military support is going to look like for the US and Israeli led attack on Iran.

19:00and you've got the NSC leaking like a sieve. It is incredible. Look, and again, just to go back to that point about why the cabinet and the government may have been reluctant to get involved, I think if the kind of nebulousness and the lack of clarity about what the end game is and the constant kind of to-ing and fro-ing between Trump and Rubio and Hegseth and the rest of them had not been enough, then I think that anybody just objectively listening, whatever you think about this operation, whatever you think about Trump and the Republic and MAGA and everything, I think objectively anyone listening to the Secretary of War, Pete Hexith, yesterday, talking about an Iranian ship which had been sunk by a torpedo not far from the coast of Sri Lanka.

19:47Many, many casualties, many, many deaths. If anybody was listening to him yesterday talking about that, I think that they would recognize that we are dealing here with a very, very different category of person and people in Washington. And although America has long used the might of its military, I cannot remember any American politician talking with such bloodlust. Listen to this. Their Navy, not a factor. Pick your adjective. It is no more. In fact, yesterday in the Indian Ocean, and we'll play it on the screen there, an American submarine sunk an Iranian warship that thought it was safe in international waters.

20:31Instead, it was sunk by a torpedo. Quiet death. The first sinking of an enemy ship by a torpedo since World War II. Like in that war, back when we were still the War Department, we are fighting to win. Yeah, I mean, Hex is there invoking the Second World War. And as you say, John, you know, do we really think that the great American generals of that war would have spoken like that? Do you think Eisenhower would have spoken like that? No, because these were proper soldiers and they understood that war is hell. And although that it was sometimes necessary, they had respect both for the means and tools of war and also for their opponents.

21:12and they would have not have had the relish over spilling blood in the way that clearly, you know, Hegseth, the jumped-up little man, really, really does. And it's just another one of those ways in which America, you know, which for so long, including, I know, to both of us, but, you know, so many generations, has been such a... For all of its faults and for all the darkness, and it has committed darkness around the world, not dewy-eyed about it, it's the only country to have ever used a nuclear weapon anywhere in the world, but nonetheless, you know, at its best moments, has been a source of inspiration and political inspiration to the West and has led the West.

21:43It's just another example of them just becoming another bunch of brutes, just another bunch of brutes who relish the use of violence without impediment and without law. Like, let's be clear here. You know, we could well be talking about a war crime and they're not even trying to hide it. They're not even trying to hide it. In fact, if anything, they're talking about it with pride. There are questions of legality and the sinking of that surface vessel by a US submarine off the coast of Sri Lanka does raise questions about legality. But there's also morality. And the kind of listening to Pete Hegseth and revelling in the deaths of Iranian sailors, nowhere near the theatre of conflict in the Middle East, it was so jarring and so shocking to me.

22:32It was gotcha style. It was gotcha. And it was frat boy. And you feel that Hegseth has got appointed because he's got a square jaw and he looks the part. And there's just a little bit of his stars and stripes kerchief above his breast pockets poking out. You know, I'm tough guy. And I'm loving all this. My guess, I have no idea. But the person who pressed the fire button on that torpedo, which has led to over 100 Iranians losing their lives. do you think he's feeling yeah hell i got them or do you think he's thinking god this is real isn't it this stuff war and i just think that when you think of the great military commanders that on the american side on any side do they revel in the death they're causing and the turmoil they're creating the old line about war is the continuation of diplomacy by other means i think he's right and i don't think that military commanders real military commanders are there going woohoo look how many people we killed today and yet that was the tone of hegseth yesterday and it was frankly repellent we will be talking to a senior american senator about pete hegseth but also about the special relationship that is coming up stay with us

23:58From a range of trusted voices and award-winning journalists. Good morning, I'm Nick Ferrari. It's time to get to your calls. Find out the latest news and hear every side of the story. I will say the UK has been very, very uncooperative. They ruined relationships. This is not Winston Churchill that we're dealing with. The Prime Minister sticks to his guns over Iran, but if Iran is the question, is a Churchillian response even the answer? The Conflict in the Middle East. Follow it live on LBC. Listen on our free global player app or the LBC app.

25:07Well, I'm delighted to say we are joined now by Senator Mark Warner, who is the vice chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee in Congress. and is also member of the Gang of Eight and was briefed by the administration on Monday about what is happening in Iran. And Senator Warner, there was a vote in the Senate last night about whether the War Powers Act should be invoked. And that was kind of thrown out. And so Donald Trump is allowed to carry on doing what he's doing in Iran. Are you clear why now and what endgame looks like? I'd love to say it was perfectly clear, but I feel absolutely the opposite.

25:53One could argue that if the president had taken some of these actions in early January, when the Iranian people were on the streets protesting the brutal regime, and let me quickly say, I'm going to shed no tears for the demise of the Supreme Leader and some of these other senior leaders of the Iranian regime. But if he'd taken action at that point, you could at least argue it was reinforcing the people on the street. He didn't take action then for two reasons. One, the aircraft carrier that would have been needed to take military action was off the coast of Venezuela on another one of his military follies.

26:31And the second, as you sure recall, that was in In early January, he was fixated on Greenland, which managed to make that all of our allies, including the UK, were trying to push back against that action as opposed to lending at least moral support towards helping the Iranian people at that point. So you could argue then, now we're a few months later after he's built up his armada. And I've had actually four different explanations given for the reason for the attack or the war. Let's not call it an attack. It is a war. One, getting rid of the Iranian nuclear capabilities, which, by the way, the president had claimed had been obliterated with the bombing last June.

27:18Two, to get rid of the ballistic missiles. and granted the missile capability of Iran was rising, but there was no imminent threat to the United States, and for that matter, imminent threat to Israel. Three, one that was thrown out more recently, maybe just in passing, was to get rid of the Iranian Navy. Not exactly something that I thought was high on anybody's bingo sheet. And then the last, which he's acknowledged a few times, then taken back a regime change. And if it's about regime change, the question I have But if the Iranian, he said to the Iranian people, take back your government. But the question I have is if the Iranian people heed his call and once again turn out, if 100 ,000 protesters show up on the streets of Tehran and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard suddenly murders 5 ,000, 10 ,000, 20 ,000, what obligation, moral or otherwise, will the United States then have to try to intervene literally with boots on the ground?

28:16So what do you think then brings this to an end? If it's not going to be regime change, and Donald Trump is speaking rather less about that than he was at the weekend when he was talking about this was the great opportunity for the Iranian people to take back their country, what kind of just suddenly says, OK, we've achieved our military objectives, because I can't see what those objectives are. Well, you're right. And I feel that the president has kind of got caught up. I mean, the one thing that is extraordinary is the ability of the American military executes, I think, brilliantly. The Maduro ouster was brilliantly executed.

28:56I'm sure there'll be an incredible film made about it before the year's out. And then the bombing last June was successful as well. I fear that he may feel like this will all be easy. But when you're attacking a nation of 92 million people that has had, again, a regime that has been anti-UK, anti-American for 47 years, it's deeply embedded. And I don't know how, even with as exquisite as the American military is, through a bombing campaign only, you can eliminate all of Iran's military capacity or even for that matter, all of its ballistic missile capacity. I guess we'll see because the administration, the Trump administration, does acknowledge that there will be more casualties and that we're probably talking not days, but weeks and potentially months.

29:49And as history has shown, it's a lot easier to get into a war in the Middle East than it is to get out of one. Senator, you've seen the presentations put to you by the administration and the intelligence. What is your, because in Europe and the UK, this is a central question which we keep orbiting around. What is your best guess as to why the president has chosen to act and chosen to act at this time, as opposed to other moments which you've already yourself alluded to, might have been more favourable? Well, I do think, and the president again acknowledged this. He said that Israel was going to attack and that if Israel attacked, Iran would strike both Israel and America.