Weak-willed global leaders are losing the West, surrendering to authoritarianism and terrorism. We have seen it with Canada’s moral bankruptcy, and we are seeing it with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer.
When American and Israeli strikes on Iran began, Starmer took the side of neutrality. He declared, “I will not commit our military personnel to unlawful action” and blocked the United States from using British air bases for the operation. Starmer then held a press conference where he proudly proclaimed that the United Kingdom “played no role in these strikes.”
EUROPEAN DEFENSE NEGLECT UNDERLINED BY ABYSMAL IRAN WAR RESPONSE
In that very same press conference, in the very next sentence, Starmer said this: “Even in the United Kingdom, the Iranian regime poses a direct threat to dissidents and to the Jewish community. Over the last year alone, they have backed more than 20 potentially lethal attacks on U.K. soil.”
This means that Starmer’s view, in practice, is that Iran can attack his country, repeatedly targeting Jews, Iranian dissidents, or any other British residents, and he will do absolutely nothing about it. In fact, he will — again, in practice — help defend the Iranian regime attacking his country by making it more difficult for the U.S. to deal with the threat of Iran. Starmer ended up reversing this after public pressure, and after Iran predictably started launching missiles at every country in its vicinity, because Starmer evidently thinks that Iran should be allowed to launch these attacks before he tries to do anything about it.
This is the exact kind of weakness that emboldens a regime like Iran in the first place. If Iran (or Russia, or China) knows that the U.K. will do nothing even if it orchestrates “20 potentially lethal attacks on U.K. soil” in a single year, why would that regime not get more aggressive toward both its neighbors and the rest of the West?
Starmer acknowledges that Iran can’t be allowed to get a nuclear weapon, then condemns American and Israeli strikes designed to prevent that from happening and to decapitate the regime that is such a threat. Then, he only decides to get involved after Iran attacks every neighboring country it can. In an alternate world without America and Israel, Starmer’s squeamishness allows Iran to get nuclear weapons. What happens to Kuwait, Qatar, Jordan, Bahrain, Azerbaijan, the U.A.E., and Saudi Arabia then?
This level of weakness invites totalitarians and terrorists to grow bolder, knowing there will be minimal pushback. Those bad actors exploit delusions about the sanctity of “international law” in hopes that countries like the U.K. will hamstring themselves, and weak-willed leaders like Starmer are happy to do so, even when dealing with a country that he admits poses an active threat to the people he is supposed to be protecting. Leaders in the mold of Keir Starmer will lose the West to the dictators and terrorists who exploit this weakness for their own gain.