Immediate domestic reactions to American bombing of Iran have displayed how divided British political parties are on Israel, Iran and US approaches to Middle Eastern politics. Priti Patel as Conservative shadow foreign secretary was firm in her support. Nigel Farage was even more enthusiastic and uncritical. Liberal Democrat MPs have been critical, and insistent that the UK should not become directly involved. Labour has been cautious, contributing only to ‘defensive’ operations against Iranian responses. The Greens have condemned the American attack. The old idea that politicians of all parties should stand shoulder to shoulder when international crisis threatens has long gone.
Attitudes to the USA partly shape this. But we have to be aware, in our ethnically and religiously diverse country, of the domestic dimension, and do whatever we can to limit bitter divisions abroad from becoming rooted within Britain. We have a valued and long-established Jewish community, many of whom are deeply unhappy about Bibi Netanyahu’s hardline policies but who nevertheless take their turn in guarding their synagogue and defending their community. We have also a growing Muslim community, from South Asia, Yemen, the Gulf states, Malaysia and East and West Africa – many first-generation immigrants, but most now their children, grandchildren or even great-grandchildren. Younger British Muslims naturally feel solidarity with their Palestinian and Iranian counterparts. Relations between British Hindus and Muslims of South Asian origin have in some places been adversely affected by Prime Minister Modi’s Hindu nationalism, feeding into a narrative of Islam under attack.
There’s a generational split, too, among our overall population. My generation was brought up in the shadow of the Holocaust, with Israel as a model of community effort and kibbutzes. Most under-30s see World War Two as ancient history and Palestinians as an occupied and oppressed nation.
It would help in managing domestic divisions if there were a wider understanding of the deeper roots of current US policy. American approaches to the Middle East have in recent years been influenced increasingly by ignorance and ideology. For MAGA devotees, Islam has replaced Judaism and Communism as the existential threat from the outside world to American values. The 9/11 attack was carried out by Arabs from Saudi Arabia; but Netanyahu has worked to persuade Republican voters and congressmen that Iran embodies the Muslim threat, and that Israel is America’s chosen partner in defeating it. The ideology of Christian Zionism, carried down from the early Puritans through Protestant congregations in the American South to the present day, holds from biblical exegesis that the restoration of the land of Israel to the Jews is an essential precursor to the ‘Second Coming’.
I encourage readers who doubt the political influence of this belief to google the Southern Baptist church, or the biography of Mike Huckabee, Baptist pastor, televangelist, governor of Arkansas and now US Ambassador in Jerusalem – and voluble supporter of ‘Greater Israel’. US policy towards the Middle East can be horrifyingly uninformed: I remember a Senator on the Foreign Relations Committee telling me, 18 months after the Iraq intervention, that he had just discovered that ‘Islam is not a monolithic religion’, that Sunni and Shia were rival groups. The USA’s Jewish population, much of it Democratic and city-based, contains many more informed critics of Trump and Netanyahu than the Christian Nationalists of the rural south.
US domestic politics is thus destabilising the Middle East. And what happens in American politics spills over into British politics. The anti-Europeans of Reform and the Conservative Party instinctively follow wherever the US Administration takes them, encouraged by invitations to Washington and the funds that flow into right-wing think tanks and political movements. Tommy Robinson affects a British version of the US South’s white Christian Nationalism; the State Department, which greeted him in Washington, has announced that it will use federal money to support like-minded groups in Britain and beyond. Liberals who value the diversity of our society, who like me have Jewish and Muslim friends deeply conflicted by this widening war, will want to do all we can to prevent this Israeli-American attack on Iran leading to conflict within Britain.
This is not, as right-wing commentators (here as in the USA) suggest, an existential conflict between ‘Judaeo-Christian civilization’ and the Muslim world. The long-term security of Israel cannot be maintained by repeated wars with its neighbours; it requires reconciliation with Arab states, and recognition of the rights of Palestinians – Muslims, Christians and agnostics alike. The pursuit of ‘Greater Israel’ and domination of the Middle East will only destabilise Arab regimes and foster Islamist radicalism among their discontented young. We must do our best to keep the conflict off the streets of Britain.
* William Wallace is LibDem peer, a former vice-chair of the Federal Policy Committee and convenor of the party's 1997 manifesto team.
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13 Comments
Events are moving fast as would be expected. So is it possible to be anti war without being seen to limp. Do we want to change the world without doing anything to change it.? Two days ago I was opposed to our involvement but now defending our allies is welcome. Starmer has gone halfway which makes him look pathetic.
@ Tim Rogers “Do we want to change the world without doing anything to change it.? Two days ago I was opposed to our involvement but now defending our allies is welcome”.
Sorry, Tim, but as someone who managed to fly out of Cyprus two hours before missiles hit a nearby RAF base this weekend, has a daughter, son-in-law and two little ones stuck without a flight in Sri Lanka, had a father-in-law blinded in WW11 and a badly shell shocked great Uncle in WW1, I can’t share your enthusiasm for the activities of the self appointed Peace Prize winner in the White House. War is evil, full stop.
In the words of that old sixties song, “When will they ever learn ?”
War is indeed evil. Alas, It is sometimes necessary.
What is necessary is that the government’s decision is informed by a consideration of Britain’s interests. Those include, for a middling power, upholding international law where we can and in my view extracting ourselves from military dependence on the US as fast as we can without compromising security, either externally or (as William Wallace says,) internally.
Easy it’s not, but in this instance ( after all we were told by Trump that he had obliterated Iran’s nuclear program only a few months ago) perhaps we would have decided that we had nothing to do with it.
But who knows what the true military position is and what pressure Trump has applied on the strategically vulnerable UK?
‘Who knows’ is a comment I happen to agree with, Tristan……….. but do you, me, or anybody else have enough confidence and knowledge of the motives, trustworthiness and stability of the present occupant of the White House to follow him blindly in his activities ?
@ Tristan Ward, you write, “War is indeed evil. Alas, It is sometimes necessary”.
Could I gently remind you of Arthur Ponsonby, personal secretary to the Liberal Prime Minister Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman and his successor as MP in Stirling Burghs, who wrote, ‘The First Casualty of war is Truth’.
Simple question, Tristan, do you trust the truthfulness and integrity of Donald Trump ?
One problem that occurs to me with the ‘immigration to combat demographic decline’ theory is that you can end up with a kind of national version of Theseus’s ship.
That is, presumably, as the original inhabitants die off and they are replaced by immigrants, at some point — even if it’s impossible to point to exactly when it happened — hasn’t the nation itself been replaced by a different nation entirely?
American approaches to the Middle East have in recent years been influenced increasingly by ignorance and ideology.
This seems a particularly misguided thing to say in a week where we have seen Mr Trump go to war with Iran while explicitly making the case by going back to kidnapping of the hostages in the American embassy in Tehran in 1979.
Mr Tump’s approach tot he Middle East, it seems to me, is neither ‘recent’, nor about ‘ignorance’ or ‘ideology’; rather, it is a man whose world-view was formed in those transitional years between the seventies and the eighties, when the USA was humiliated on the world stage by Iran, asserting American dominance before there is any possibility of the same thing happening again.
The long-term security of Israel cannot be maintained by repeated wars with its neighbours; it requires reconciliation with Arab states
Was that not the entire point of the ‘Abraham accords’ pursued in Mr Trump’s first presidential term? There’s a theory I’ve seen, which seems fairly solid, that the horrific massacre perpetrated by Hamas on the 7th of October 2023 was in large part aimed at derailing that process, especially before Saudi Arabia could be brought on board.
Possibly, if Iran emerges from this conflict either with a new regime in place or sufficiently weakened that it can no longer support its proxy forces, that process of normalising relations between Israel and its neighbours, which did seem to be making progress, can get back on track?
War is never the answer. If POTUS has been applying undue pressure on Starmer, it only amplifies the need to sever links with the USA and end our over reliance on trade with that country until such time as the USA has a president who respects international law and the USA’s ally. Mark Carney’s middle sized countries cooperation seems a more sound idea as each day passes. None of this is easy, but Starmer’s policy of Trump appeasement isn’t working. We need a different approach.
Mark Carney supports the US action.
” We must do our best to keep the conflict off the streets of Britain ”
“Most under-30s see World War Two as ancient history and Palestinians as an occupied and oppressed nation.”
So you’re saying that the “under 30s” , and others of similar opinions, should do no more than write to their MPs about the issue?
Peter Martin:
I wrote – ‘to keep the CONFLICT off the streets of Britain.’ Nothing about banning or discouraging peaceful demonstrations. But this is the sort of international conflict (and oppression) that can easily radicalise young people here into violence. That’s what I’m warning against, and asking other reasonable people to do their best to avoid by working on understanding and cooperation among different communities, and arguing that this is NOT our war. Netanyahu focusses n Iran with the aim of making us all forget about Palestine…
It seems, whilst still condemning Blair for taking the UK into an illegal war some here appear to be calling for Starmer to enter another one..
Ah, well.
Calling Starmer “pathetic” on Iran is unfair. What if British soldiers had been killed by an Iranian missile, and Starmer had refused to take any defensive action to prevent it?
Starmer has often played the toady to Trump, but on Iran, it seems to me that he has so far made a pretty fair fist of opposing the war on principle while standing up for British interests.
Lib Dems should not just fire off knee-jerk anti-Labour propaganda. Leave it until Labour genuinely adopt bad policies on a host of issues (it won’t be a long wait!)