To think Keir Starmer has set us up to be the target of war strikes?

[Carlie97]

He's a dick.

And this sort of black and white nonsense is the whole problem with discussion on this. Either you support an illegal war or you are 'taking the side of the regime'. That's what it comes back to over and over again. It's absolutely juvenile.

People are uncritically spouting the talking points of the Iranian regime uncritically, even on this thread.

And don't try and persuade me that the concern for international law and Iran peaceful nuke talks that is preoccupying the same people who have been marching on the streets calling for a global intifada against Israel, praising the Hamas 'resistance', cheering on the Houthis for attacking shipping aren't connected.

I think the issues are rather more complicated than this polarised, ad hominem/feminam nonsense, don't you?

Of course it is but for some there is no room for nuance and as @noblegiraffe says her mind is closed and no one can change it.

Everything is so complex in 2026. Saving women means killing other women. Sigh. It's exhausting. And the ME most of all.

I mean, I saw the horrendous massacre of Iranian protestors in January and Iranians begging for help, and I wished that something could be done to help them.

So now help has come, and the Iranians are dancing in the streets I’m certainly not grabbing a ‘Hands Off Iran’ placard and going out and protesting that the Iranian regime should have been allowed to simply continue their slaughter of innocents.

Some people, however, are so wedded to the idea that Israel are the worst country on Earth and it was them that bombed Iran, (who incidentally also hate Israel), that they think the morally correct course of action is to condemn this intervention and protest it in the face of the Iranians who had been begging for it. Tbf some of them are also condemning Trump, but you can even see on this thread Netanyahu being singled out.

And to justify this, they’re having to blatantly ignore the slaughter of tens of thousands of innocents, and big up the ludicrous idea that Iran really could be trusted when it comes to their claims that they don’t really want nukes.

I'm certainly no big fan of Starmer and his premiership so far, but I think he is handling this crisis well. Correct decision to not go into Iran. I'm not convinced the long term planning be it defeat of Iran or stalemate with the status quo of the Iran RG remaining has really been thought through by the US and Israel. In that regard, I think the UK is best staying out of this one.

Agree.

Quite. I think his problems are

(i) as a centrist, he finds it difficult to convey what he stands for
(ii) he lacks the charisma of a thatcher, blair, cameron or Johnson
(iii) the right wing media holds sway and attacks him relentlessly
(iv) a handful of policy cock-ups/U turns that have undermined credibility

Beyond that, I think he's a capable human being, trying to do the right thing in decent circumstances.

With foreign policy, (i) is an irrelevance, (ii) becomes a strength, (iii) is a different set of dynamics as far as the Mail and Telegraph is concerned, so he gets a break, and (iv) he's managed not to cock up, possibly because he has more experienced advisors around him.

But yes, he's doing a cracking job on the world stage, in very difficult and unuusal times.

Certianly not a 'dick' fgs.

I can even half-forgive him appointing Mandelson. Obviously with hindsight it was a rotten decision. Just as obviously, he will have known he was dodgy (everyone does), but the White House wanted him, he recognised the importance of the relationship, he possibly felt he was the only person who could manage Trump, and that on balance it was worth the risk.

I mean, blatantly it wasn't, but that politics.

Sorry, I digress.

Yes, it was interesting to see how the US commentators (even RW commentators) viewed the situation compared to UK.

OP here are two names for you to google and make some observations:
Dr Cinderella Nonoo Cohen
Dr Rahmeh Aladwan