President Donald Trump is losing support from the British mainstream Right and the party of his closest friend in the United Kingdom over the Iran conflict.
Reform U.K. leader Nigel Farage broached the topic during a press conference on Thursday, lamenting that the United Kingdom has been “all over the place” regarding its position on Operation Epic Fury and criticizing Prime Minister Keir Starmer for unnecessarily aggravating allies.
“It seems that the Prime Minister has upset the Americans. He’s upset the Cypriots. He’s upset much of the Middle East,” Farage said, but extended a quasi-olive branch to 10 Downing Street when he acknowledged Starmer “may be right not to commit us militarily to direct involvement.”
Farage tempered his position by explaining the United Kingdom “couldn’t do it anyway” because “we haven’t got a Royal Navy” — echoing Trump’s earlier accusations that the U.K. doesn’t “even have a navy,” calling His Majesty’s Armed Forces “too old” with “aircraft carriers that didn’t work.”
Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch, who does not have the same long-standing friendship with Trump as Farage, acknowledged on Thursday that the Iranian government is a “terrorist regime sponsoring the Houthis, Hamas, Hezbollah” that ultimately “threatens the U.K.”
But “Trump started this war in Iran,” Badenoch warned, explaining that “you’ve got to have a plan.”
She continued: “And if he’s made a mess in the Strait of Hormuz, he’s the one who needs to fix it.”
The U.K. has suffered a lackluster and sometimes muddled response to the turmoil in the Middle East. Starmer has sought to position himself as a source of “calm leadership” to the British public amid a conflict that is “not our war.”
But the few concrete actions the prime minister has sought to take, such as the deployment of a British aircraft carrier, have taken far longer to implement than expected and have signaled a military unequipped to respond efficiently to threats.
Trump took a potshot at Starmer during a White House lunch on Wednesday, where he recalled being confused by Starmer’s constant consultations with his team before taking any action — recalling a conversation in which he asked the prime minister to send “two old, broken down aircraft carriers.”
Trump, affecting a comedically weak voice to impersonate Starmer, claimed the prime minister responded: “No, no, no, I have to ask my team. My team has to meet, we’re meeting next week.”
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Starmer, at a 10 Downing Street press conference on Wednesday, voiced his belief that the country’s future lies with continental Europe rather than the mercurial United States.
“It is increasingly clear, as the world continues down this volatile path, our long-term national interest requires closer partnership with our allies in Europe and with the EU,” the prime minister said.
British Foreign Minister Yvette Cooper hosted a virtual summit with counterparts from over three dozen other countries to discuss reopening the Strait of Hormuz after Trump demanded governments affected by the closure deal with it themselves.