Former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has thrown his weight behind Tony Blair’s demand that Britain join the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran, writing in a Daily Mail column on April 3 that Keir Starmer’s refusal to offer British bases and military assets was “a colossal failure of statecraft.” Johnson called Starmer’s statement that “this is not our war” an “immortal and imbecilic judgment.”
Johnson’s column reads as a brief for restoring the US-UK “special relationship” as a vehicle for war. He invokes Margaret Thatcher and Blair as models of partnered participation in Gulf wars, praising both the 1991 and 2003 wars as “immediate military successes, with clear goals that were publicly explained and rapidly achieved”—a breathtaking rewrite of the 2003 Iraq disaster that Blair’s own lies helped launch and which has destabilized the entire region for a generation. Johnson complains that Britain left it “entirely to Bibi Netanyahu to whisper exclusively in Trump’s ear,” and faults former U.S. Ambassador Peter Mandelson for failing to insert Britain into war planning early.
