Sky News, no friend of the current government, has carried out some polling on what voters think of Keir Starmer’s handling of Donald Trump’s war on Iran. According to YouGov, 37% of voters support his response to Trump’s actions but 41% say Starmer has handled things badly. As usual with polls, there is little by way of explanation as to why so many people think the PM has done so badly, so we are left to guess. Sky News speculates – and speculation is what most news outlets seem to be operating with these days, rather than actual journalism – that Starmer’s general unpopularity is responsible for the poll results, in which case, how about conducting a poll that scratches beneath the surface?
What do the 41% say the government should have done instead? Kowtow to an unhinged and likely demented US president and involve British armed forces in an Israeli/US led military attack, seemingly without aims and definitely without an exit strategy? Because that’s the alternative to what the government has done. Put British planes in the sky, British warships to sea and, no doubt, British boots on the ground. Why? No seems to ask the 41%. Maybe it’s not their sons and daughters who would be put in harm’s way, some destined to return in body bags? Ask them specifically: what should the government have done that they haven’t done so far? Replying that they hate Keir Starmer because Chris Mason told them to is not good enough. Given how badly some people think the government has done, some of the other results seem to make even less sense.
70% oppose the UK taking military action in Tehran, compared to 17% who do. 57% believe that Trump was wrong to take action and 18% say he was right. By that token, Starmer was both right and wrong to keep the UK out of it. Schrödinger’s war, basically. I am not an expert in even the most basic arithmetic but even I can conclude from these bizarre results that the Great British Public is facing both ways at the same time.
I appreciate that the company I keep is probably not representative of the current opinion polls in Britain. My family and friends are generally of a liberal, with a small l, disposition, generally peace-loving, moderate folk, who do not see Nigel Farage as anything other than a thoroughly modern (Oswald) Mosley, who is bringing fascism back to the UK. On the occasions we talk about international matters, we are driven by caution and believe that “jaw-jaw is better than war-war”, as our great war leader Winston Churchill so memorably put it. But even those who are not disposed to centrist or left of centre politics have not expressed me their desire to bomb the fuck out of Iran in order to suit the whims of a genocidal maniac like Benjamin Netanyahu and Dementia Donny (Trump). Some people seem to be opposed to something they are also in favour of “because of Starmer”.
Trump’s war does not represent any kind of plan. It is not even a means to an end. And while the pre-Trump US was a loyal and reliable ally, today’s version is anything but. Following an elderly malignant narcissist with likely frontotemporal dementia into an undefined and potentially endless war does not strike me as the best use of our resources. The 41% who say they are against the government’s position should be asked to clarify what they would have done instead – and why. My guess is most of them would have done exactly the same as Keir Starmer. And if he really is more unpopular than Boris Johnson and Liz Truss, there are a few people out there who need to give their heads a fucking big wobble.
Let’s stay out of Trump’s war and seek to rebuild peace. I don’t want to see a single British life lost in this ill-thought out conflict. If you think the government should be sending British armed forces to risk their lives in a conflict we did not start and to which there is no obvious end, then offer to help carry the body bags when they return home. If that’s how the 41% really think, then I might have more respect for them, certainly more than I do now, which isn’t very much.
