BORIS JOHNSON: Tony Blair is true. We might not just like the struggle with Iran however we won’t faux that it is not our struggle, too

Where was Britain? That is the question people are asking themselves today – in the US and the Gulf, and around the world.

Where was Britain back in January and February of this year?

It was clear that the US was building a huge Armada off Iran though it was of course far from clear, at that stage, what the plan was.

We have a vast Embassy in Washington. We have peerless security and intelligence services.

Did they discover what was going on? Did Starmer have the guts to ask Donald Trump? If not, it shows a disastrous lack of curiosity.

There is a world of difference between a few tactical strikes against Iranian military facilities – as a way of encouraging the nuclear negotiations – and an all-out assault aimed at killing scores of regime figures.

If we had only involved ourselves in what was going on, we could have asked some useful questions, ones that maybe War Secretary Pete Hegseth hadn’t thought of. We could have helped shape Trump’s thinking, because we know the Gulf well.

It was the British who helped to create most of those Gulf monarchies, one way or the other; and in some of them we were, in living memory – the early 1970s – the colonial authority.

For better or worse, the UK played a huge role in the birth of modern Iran. Our understanding of the culture and politics of the Middle East is – or was – one of the glories of the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office. We certainly know the basic facts of geography.

If we had been in the room – which we should have been – we could have asked: what is the plan if, as has long been predicted, the Iranians respond to a large-scale attack by closing the Strait of Hormuz? Are you ready for boots on the ground?

What if, to quote an adviser to a notorious former Republican president, you find that you have got your tits in the wringer?

We are the second most important player in Nato. We pride ourselves, not without reason, on being the closest, most long-term and most dependable ally of the US. But we seem to have done nothing to attempt to influence the American approach to Iran – though there were obvious and serious risks to Britain and to the world economy.

Let me put it this way: Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair were intimately involved in preparations for both previous Gulf wars, in 1991 and 2003.

Whatever you say about those wars they were both immediate military successes, with clear goals that were publicly explained and rapidly achieved.

Where was Britain this time? Why wasn’t Starmer in the room? Even if he wasn’t invited it was his duty to get in there.

Instead, we left it entirely to Bibi Netanyahu to whisper exclusively in Trump’s ear, when the Israeli leader clearly has an agenda of his own.

That was a colossal failure of statecraft and diplomacy.

I now look back at that period earlier this year and wonder what happened in UK/US relations. Was it some post-Mandelson chaos? 

The Labour Government showed the bollard-like passivity that is the hallmark of the PM and that continued, I am afraid, when the war broke out. We were pathetically slow to respond to the Iranian bombardment of UK bases in Cyprus and Diego Garcia.

More significantly, we failed to come to the aid fast enough of some of our best friends and allies in the world. Saudi, Qatar, Kuwait, the Emirates, Bahrain, Oman – they have all come under highly destructive attacks from Iranian drones.

We have belatedly got four Typhoons up in the skies, shooting down Iranian drones from our base in Cyprus. But as far as I can make out, we still haven’t sent any anti-aircraft defences and we have chosen this moment to run down our naval base in Bahrain, so that the British ships and sailors have all gone home – just when the Bahrainis feel most in need of support.

Worse, when Trump asked for allied help in opening the Strait of Hormuz, Starmer offered that immortal and imbecilic judgment that: ‘This is not our war.’

Not our war? When energy prices are spiralling and Britons are already being pounded at the pumps?

Not our war when, compounded by Labour’s awful policies, this conflict threatens economic pain for every family in the land?

Not our war when some of our most important friends are getting bombarded every day?

Has Starmer any idea who actually invests in this country? Get out on to the roof of No 10, Sir Keir, and take a look at the billions the Gulf has poured into our capital alone. Will things still be the same, after the way we have behaved?

We can all understand why so many people – in this country and around the world – are secretly or openly gloating at Trump’s discomfiture. He has relentlessly trolled the Europeans, over Greenland, over tariffs, our military valour and so on.

I can understand why so many people feel that Trump has made his bed and can now lie on it; that he can stew in his own juice; and that having broken the jug in the pottery barn he has now bought it and owns it; and so on.

I can understand people in the Labour Party wanting to stick two fingers up to Trump. Apart from anything else, Starmer is now clearly a prisoner of the Muslim vote in this country.

But it is a huge long-term strategic mistake for our nation to distance itself from America.

This war could still end well, in spite of current difficulties, with the real prospect of change for the better in Iran. But we would be in a much better position to help, and to prevent further mistakes, if we occupied our traditional position of being a loyal and dependable ally.

I am afraid Blair is right. We should have immediately offered our bases. We should immediately have offered to help clear the Strait with what ships we have. We would then be better placed to bring this war to an end soon and persuade Trump to declare victory now, because the Iranians would see that the US could actually count on its allies when the going gets tough.

It is a delusion to think we can stick our heads in the sand, as Starmer has tried to do, and it is an absolute delusion to think there is some European-only substitute for Nato. The transatlantic alliance has been the most important geo-strategic fact of the last 150 years and it relies on a basic principle of mutuality.

Starmer says this is not our war, and it is certainly not one we in the UK would have launched or advised, had we been in the room from the outset. But we cannot now escape its consequences; and we should remember the sheer scale of the American commitment to us and to our security.

How did we win the Falklands? How did we save Bosnia and Kosovo? With American help – and the Americans certainly weren’t responsible for the genesis of either conflict.

Go to the graves of the thousands of Americans who died on the beaches of Normandy in 1944, kids from Kansas who had never been to Europe before.

Plenty of isolationist Americans said it wasn’t their war. But they helped bring it to an end – and thank God for that.