Foreign Secretary says UK had to ‘learn the lessons’ of Blair’s mistakes in 2003 invasion of Iraq
Yvette Cooper has gone to war with Tony Blair for saying Britain should have backed America’s airstrikes as Iran burns and ‘rains oil’.
The Foreign Secretary said the UK had to ‘learn the lessons’ of mistakes the former Labour Prime Minister made over the invasion of Iraq.
Blair told a private lunch that current PM Sir Keir Starmer ‘should have backed America from the very beginning’ in the current war with Iran by letting President Donald Trump ’s forces use Brit air bases.
He said: “If they are your ally and they are an indispensable cornerstone for your security you had better show up when they want you to.
“You’ve got to say to them ‘the American relationship matters’. It matters particularly today. It’s not a question of whether it’s this president or that president.”
Instead Starmer initially banned US forces from operating from Diego Garcia in the Chagos Islands and RAF Fairford, Glos, only to u-turn 24 hours into the conflict.
Trump said it was ‘far too late’, branded Starmer a ‘loser’ and ‘no Winston Churchill’ and said the PM’s dithering had wrecked the ‘special relationship’ between the two countries.
Reacting to reports Britain may now send aircraft carriers to the Middle East a week into the conflict Trump wrote on social media: “We don’t need them any longer. But we will remember. We don’t need people that join wars after we’ve already won.”
Asked about Blair’s criticism of Starmer, Cooper told Sky News: “I just disagree. There are some people in politics who think that we should always agree with the US whatever.
“There are other people in politics who think we should never take action with the US again whatever the circumstances. I don’t think either of those positions is in the UK national interest and it is the responsibility for Keir Starmer to act in the UK’s national interest for British citizens.”
Asked if she was calling Blair the US’s ‘poodle’ she said: “I think the point is to make sure that, actually, we learn the lessons from some of the things that went wrong in Iraq, and I think that is exactly what Keir Starmer has done.”
She said the UK and US ‘disagreed on a series of issues’ but Britain had to ‘take decisions ourselves’ and people needed to ‘focus on the substance and not social media posts’.
Starmer would not turn to ‘rhetoric or hyperbole’, she said, and would focus on ‘calm, steady decision-making’.
She told BBC One’s Sunday With Laura Kuenssberg: “It’s for the US president to decide what he thinks is in the US national interest and that’s for him to do.
“But it is our job as the UK government to decide what’s in the UK national interest.
“And that doesn’t mean simply agreeing with other countries or outsourcing our foreign policy to other countries.
“Keir Starmer’s style of doing politics is obviously very different, and I think that kind of calm, cool-headed approach to these big, serious international issues is right.”
Blair has been fiercely criticised over two decades for his decision to join the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 on the false belief Saddam Hussein’s regime had developed weapons of mass destruction.
Iran’s ambassador in London Seyed Ali Mousavi warned the UK to be ‘very careful’ about getting more involved in the current war.
He said his country would have a ‘right to self-defence’ if Britain joined US-Israeli attacks on Iran and the government should be ‘very delicate, very careful’ in its actions.
Only 8% of Brits back the UK getting directly involved in the war, according to a recent YouGov poll.
Green Party leader Zack Polanski has called on Starmer to condemn the conflict and stop the US using Brit air bases.
But Tory leader Kemi Badenoch and Reform UK’s Nigel Farage have accused Starmer of letting down its traditional ally and failing to protect Brits stranded in the Gulf warzone.
Four US bombers landed at Fairford over the weekend as America has started using UK bases for ‘specific defensive operations’ to stop Iran firing missiles.
A Merlin helicopter is being sent to the Middle East to help with surveillance and RAF Typhoon and F-35 jets are flying sorties over Jordan, Qatar and Cyprus.
Air defence destroyer HMS Dragon is not expected to sail to the eastern Mediterranean until next week. It will take up to seven days to make the trip leaving other nations including France and Greece to protect RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus which was hit by a drone strike at the start of the war.
Angry Cypriots took to the streets over the weekend demanding Britain gives up its two military bases on the island.
“Say it loud, say it clear, British bases out of here,” chanted protesters marching to the presidential palace in capital Nicosia.
Reform UK MP Robert Jenrick said: “I think it’s one of the worst failures of military planning in recent years that the United States could build up the biggest armada in that region in a generation and Keir Starmer didn’t put a single ship into the region. We had to rely on the French to defend our base in Cyprus.”
Shadow home secretary Chris Philp called it a ‘dereliction of duty’ not to move warships to Cyprus or the Middle East sooner.
“Keir Starmer and the Labour Government showed no foresight whatsoever,” he said.
“Even though they knew three or four weeks ago that America planned this action against Iran they did not move those ships into the region. That is a dereliction of duty, frankly.”
Britain reportedly has as little as two days of stored gas raising fears of a crisis as Middle East supplies dry up.
UK reserves have shrunk from 18,000 GWh last year to 6,700 GWh – enough for just 1.5 days of demand, according to National Gas. A similar amount is stored in tanks as liquefied natural gas. Europe has several weeks’ worth.
Meanwhile it was ‘raining oil’ in Iran’s capital Tehran on Sunday after Israel struck multiple depots in an overnight bombardment.
Footage showed intense fires with plumes of black smoke rising above the city.
Rainfall left black oily streaks on buildings while storm drains through the streets became burning streams.
Iran targeted desalination plants across the Gulf in a bid to cripple drinking water supplies.