The desire to stay out of other people’s wars is understandable, and there is no dishonour in John McDonnell, a Labour neutralist, seeking Liberal Democrat and Green support in parliament to try to block the United States using British bases for attacks on Iran.
But it is not possible for Britain to have nothing to do with the conflict in the Middle East. Our citizens’ standard of living is affected by the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. British expatriates are vulnerable to Iranian missiles in several Gulf countries, which are allies. And British bases, including Cyprus and Diego Garcia, are also within range.
Mr McDonnell would no doubt want to give up British military bases around the world, and thinks that British expats and the allied nations that accommodate them should look after themselves. But even then he ought to recognise that Britain has an economic interest in the free passage of ships in international waters – at least until such a time, some decades in the future, when we can function without petroleum products at all.
Sir Keir Starmer is right, therefore, to give American forces permission to use British bases, in Britain as well as in the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean, for the purely defensive purpose of trying to knock out the launchers from which Iranian missiles are threatening international ships in the Strait of Hormuz.
That is why British forces took part in strikes against Houthi missile launchers over the past two years: in order to protect international shipping traffic in the Red Sea.
Indeed, we believe Sir Keir is right to go further, as he is doing, to volunteer British forces to take part in a multinational effort to police the Strait after the current phase of the conflict is over.
Mr McDonnell may wish that Britain did not have a base, Diego Garcia, on the Chagos Islands. Sir Keir even seems to agree with him, having agreed to pay Mauritius to take it off our hands – a transaction, currently in limbo, that many people struggle to understand. Even if the deal were to go ahead, however, Diego Garcia would be leased back to Britain and we would, in turn, continue to allow the Americans to maintain their base there.
Come what may, therefore, we have an interest in the base, which has been targeted by Iranian ballistic missiles. If we have the capability to intercept attacks on it, or to prevent them from being launched in the first place, we should use it. Just as our forces are intercepting drones and missiles aimed by Iran at Cyprus and our other allies in the region.
The Independent believes that the prime minister has followed the right policy in this conflict. He was right not to support America and Israel in starting the war, as their aim of containing the Iranian regime’s nuclear weapons ambition was better pursued by diplomacy and intelligence. But once it had started, and Iran attacked its neighbours and closed one-fifth of the world’s oil supply, British forces were right to take defensive measures and the British government was right to give the Americans permission to use our bases for defensive purposes.
Mr McDonnell’s instinctive anti-Americanism and Sir Ed Davey’s opportunist opposition to Donald Trump should not cloud their understanding of the British national interest. Britain should defend its citizens abroad, and it should stand by its allies in the region. But above all, Britain should join with the international community in seeking to protect the free flow of trade and to prevent a global recession.
The danger of a world economic crisis is one reason Mr Trump was so unwise to launch this war in the first place, and it is why the conflict should be brought to an end as quickly as possible, but as long as the conflict lasts, Britain cannot stay out of it.
