Starmer Is Being Haunted by a Ghost From Britain's Past

“I am his highness’s dog at Kew; Pray tell me, sir, whose dog are you?” This was the epigram engraved on the collar of a puppy that the poet Alexander Pope gave to a Prince of Wales. In power structures, everyone is ultimately under the sway of someone else. UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer insists he was his own man when he refused to sanction support for the US-Israeli assault on Iran on day one of Operation Epic Fury. Yet leaked accounts of a fraught cabinet discussion dispute it.

An angry President Donald Trump accused his British ally of being “no Churchill” after the PM initially refused to let American planes set off from British airbases. Starmer’s friend and adviser on international law, the Attorney General Richard Hermer, and a majority of Trump-hostile Labour lawmakers, appeared to be yanking harder than the White House on Starmer’s leash.