Starmer Backed the Neocons’ War. Labour Will Pay the Price.

Hub

APRIL 27, 2026

The architects of Operation Epic Fury spent years building toward this moment. By giving them British legitimacy, Keir Starmer has handed Labour’s opponents a weapon they’ll use for a generation, argues Hassan El Biali.

There’s a moment in every Labour foreign policy disaster where you can see the decision being made. Not the formal vote, not the parliamentary statement, but the earlier moment, quieter, when the leadership decides that the political cost of dissent is higher than the political cost of compliance.

With Blair and Iraq, that moment came somewhere between the second dossier and the resignation of Robin Cook. With Starmer and Operation Epic Fury, I’d place it earlier,  around the time the White House made clear that criticism of the Iran campaign would be treated as an unfriendly act by an administration that holds considerable leverage over the UK economy.

The result is the same either way. Labour says nothing meaningful. The war continues. And somewhere down the line, the Party pays.

Who built this war — and why it matters for Labour

Before we get to Starmer’s failure specifically, it’s worth understanding what he chose not to criticise. Operation Epic Fury didn’t emerge from a policy vacuum. It was the product of years of groundwork by a specific ideological network: the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, supported by pro-Israel mega-backers; Jack Keane, the retired general turned Fox News commentator who sat on the board of General Dynamics and has been calling for military pressure on Iran for the better part of a decade; Lindsey Graham, whose Senate floor performances in favour of Iran confrontation have been so consistent they border on performance art; and Jared Kushner, whose Gulf business interests and Abraham Accords vision both depend on Iran remaining isolated and pressured.

This is the neoconservative machine that produced the war. It is an American machine, primarily. But it requires international legitimacy to function — and that legitimacy, in the Anglo-American relationship, has always run through London.

Blair gave it to Bush. Starmer is giving it to Trump. The mechanism is identical. The consequences, historically, have also been identical.

The Blair precedent Labour refuses to learn

Iraq didn’t just kill people. It killed Labour’s working-class coalition. It created the conditions for the collapse of trust in the political establishment that eventually produced Brexit, Boris Johnson, and the Tories’ so-called ‘red wall’ breakthrough. The through-line from the second Iraq dossier to Labour’s 2019 general election catastrophe is not straight, but it exists.

Labour has spent years conducting internal post-mortems on Iraq. Chilcot. Apologies. Promises that it will never happen again. And now here we are, with a Labour government that has offered no meaningful parliamentary debate on British support for a U.S. military campaign that has — according to human rights monitors — killed over 3,400 Iranians, including 254 children. This includes the 31 children killed in the Minab school strike of March 2026, which received approximately four column inches in the British press before disappearing entirely.

What does it say about Labour’s institutional memory that the Party could go through everything Iraq cost it and still produce a leadership that makes the same calculation: Washington matters more than principle?

I’m not sure it says anything flattering.

The electoral arithmetic Starmer is ignoring

Let’s set aside the moral argument for a moment — not because it doesn’t matter, but because the Labour leadership has demonstrated it can set it aside quite comfortably. Let’s talk about votes.

Muslim voters in Britain are not a monolith. But they are a significant bloc in dozens of marginal constituencies, and their relationship with Labour has been deteriorating since Gaza. The Iran war — prosecuted with U.S. munitions, supported by British silence, with civilian casualties mounting — is accelerating that deterioration. The Greens and various independent candidates are ready to receive those votes. They are, in fact, actively campaigning for them.

Then there’s the younger, progressive voter — the one Labour needs to replace the older working-class support it has been haemorrhaging. This demographic does not experience the U.S.-Iran war as a distant geopolitical abstraction. They see it through social media footage of the Minab aftermath, through the de-platformed journalists trying to cover Iranian civilian casualties, through a media environment that the neocon infrastructure has shaped but that younger audiences navigate around.

Starmer’s silence on the war is not neutral. It is a choice. And it is a choice that gifts Labour’s opponents — the Greens, Reform on the other flank, and any future left challenger — a ready-made narrative: Labour had a chance to be different from Blair, and it chose not to be.

What an independent Labour foreign policy would look like

I want to be clear that I’m not arguing for a position of naive pacifism or reflexive anti-Americanism. I’m arguing for something much simpler: an independent assessment.

Labour could have called for an immediate ceasefire and independent investigation into the Minab strike without breaking the Anglo-American alliance. Ireland managed it. Norway managed it. Several NATO members have expressed reservations about Operation Epic Fury without being expelled from the Western order. The idea that any criticism of the war would constitute a catastrophic diplomatic rupture is a fiction — and it’s a fiction that happens to serve the neoconservative network that built the war in the first place.

A Labour Party with a functioning foreign policy conscience would name Jack Keane’s conflicts of interest. It would ask questions about FDD funding in parliamentary debate. It would note, loudly, that the architects of this war have been wrong about every Middle East military intervention for twenty-five years and have faced no professional consequences whatsoever.

That Labour Party does not currently exist at the leadership level. It exists in the membership, in the trade unions, in the constituency parties that passed emergency motions on the Iran war that the bureaucracy quietly buried. It exists in the tradition of Robin Cook and the handful of MPs who have broken with the front bench line.

Whether it can reassert itself before the electoral cost becomes permanent is, at this point, genuinely uncertain.

The question Labour has to answer

I started with Blair. Let me end there too.

Robin Cook resigned from the Cabinet in March 2003 rather than support the Iraq invasion. His resignation speech is still quoted as one of the most principled acts in modern British parliamentary history. It didn’t stop the war. But it drew a line. It said: not in my name, not from this dispatch box.

The question for Labour in 2026 is whether there is a single senior figure willing to draw that line on the Iran war. To say, clearly, that backing a neoconservative military project built by donors and think tanks and TV generals with defence industry board seats is not what the Labour Party is for. That the children of Minab deserve the same column inches as any other children killed in any other conflict that Britain had a hand in enabling.

So far, the answer appears to be no.

Labour’s opponents are taking careful note.

Hassan El Biali is a political analyst and writer covering U.S. foreign policy, international security, and Middle East geopolitics. He writes for Independent Australia, Counterfire and other international affairs outlets, and publishes on Substack at Megam226.substack.com

Image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Prime_Minister_Keir_Starmer_attends_the_G7_Summit_in_Canada_%2854594328961%29.jpg Source: Prime Minister Keir Starmer attends the G7 Summit in Canada Author: Number 10, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.

UK Green MP calls on Keir Starmer to resign over Peter Mandelson scandal in fiery PMQs speech

Olivia Barber 

22 April, 2026 

Left Foot Forward

‘Does the prime minister not recognise that the best thing he can do to restore trust [...] is to take true responsibility and resign?’

Green MP Dr Ellie Chowns used her question at PMQs to call on Keir Starmer to resign as prime minister.

In a fiery speech, Chowns accused Starmer of appointing Peter Mandelson, who had links to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, “in a desperate and doomed attempt to pander to Donald Trump”.

Chowns alleged that Starmer knew about Mandelson’s involvement in Kremlin-linked company Sistema and his friendship with Epstein.

She also criticised the PM for taking “a dismissive and extraordinarily incurious attitude to vetting, compromising national security”.

This comes after Sir Olly Robbins, former head of the foreign office, who Starmer fired last week, told the Foreign Affairs select committee that there was a “dismissive approach” to Mandelson’s vetting at No 10.

In reference to Starmer sacking Robbins, she added: “Now he has thrown a civil servant under the bus to save his own skin.”

The Green MP continued to criticise Starmer, stating: “All this from a prime minister who promised to restore trust and integrity in government, but who has repeatedly betrayed the trust of voters and let the country down.”

Chowns then asked Starmer: “Does the prime minister not recognise that the best thing he can do to restore trust and integrity is to take true responsibility and resign?”.

The prime minister did not respond to Chowns’ call for him to resign.

Instead, Starmer said the Green MP was wrong about there being “a dismissive attitude” to vetting.

The prime minister said: “Mr Speaker, let me just correct what she said. There was no dismissive attitude to developed vetting, I knew the post was subject to developed vetting.”

He added: “it was subject to developed vetting, what didn’t happen was that I wasn’t told about the UKSV recommendation. That was a serious error of judgement.”

Starmer once again said that if he’d known about the UK Security Vetting Recommendation he wouldn’t have appointed Mandelson.

Chowns shook her head at Starmer’s response.

5 things we learned from Sir Olly Robbins giving evidence on Peter Mandelson’s appointment

Olivia Barber 

21 April, 2026 

Left Foot Forward

Pressure is piling on the prime minister over the Mandelson scandal ahead of the local elections

Sir Olly Robbins, former head civil servant at the Foreign Office, appeared before the Foreign Affairs Select Committee today to give evidence on Peter Mandelson’s appointment as US ambassador.

Sir Keir Starmer fired Robbins last week, after it emerged that the foreign office had granted Mandelson security clearance despite him failing the vetting process. Mandelson was fired from his ambassador position last September after it was revealed that he had had close ties with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Here are 5 things we learned from Robbins’ appearance at the select committee hearing.Robbins did not tell the prime minister about Mandelson’s failed vetting

Starmer has consistently insisted that he was not told that Lord Mandelson failed the vetting process carried out by the Foreign Office. Robbins confirmed that he did not tell the prime minister that Mandelson had failed the vetting process.

He told MPs today: “You are not supposed to share the findings and reports of UKSV other than in the exceptional circumstances where doing so allows for the specific mitigation of risk.”

Starmer and No 10 say that there is nothing to stop officials telling the prime minister about the recommendations made by security officials even if they are not involved in making the decision. Starmer announced Mandelson’s appointment before he was vetted.

Starmer announced Mandelson’s appointment as US ambassador in December 2024, before the Foreign Office had completed its vetting process.

Robbins told the committee: “I regret that this process was not done before [the] announcement”. However, he said it would not have changed his decision if it had been.

He also noted that Mandelson had already been given access to the Foreign Office building as well as “highly classified briefing on a case-by-case basis” prior to vetting being carried out.

The prime minister said that vetting usually happens after the appointment. Starmer told MPs on Monday: “For a direct ministerial appointment, it was usual for security vetting to happen after the appointment but before the individual starting in post. That was the process in place at the time.”‘Not a given’ Mandelson would be vetted at all

Robbins said there was a “dismissive approach” to vetting at No 10.

The sacked civil servant said: “I’m afraid I don’t think, at the point of his appointment and for days thereafter, it was actually a given that he would be vetted. He also said that the position taken by the Cabinet Office was that Mandelson’s status meant “vetting might be unnecessary”. Constant pressure on foreign office to get Mandelson to Washington

“The focus was on getting Mandelson out to Washington quickly,” Robbins said, adding: “Throughout January, honestly, my office [and] the foreign secretary’s office were under constant pressure. There was an atmosphere of constant chasing.”Starmer asked Robbins to ‘potentially’ get diplomat job for his top spin doctor

During the select committee today, Robbins told MPs that No 10 asked him to “potentially” find an ambassadorial job for Matthew Doyle, who at the time was the prime minister’s director of communications.

Robbins said he had felt “quite uncomfortable” about the request, and that he was told not to discuss the possible appointment with the then-Foreign Secretary David Lammy.

Olivia Barber is a reporter at Left Foot Forward

Surely this the end of the Starmer Project – but will it take the Labour Party down with it?

HubMP2012

APRIL 20, 2026

Frank Hansen explains why the Prime Minister’s claims of ignorance about Mandelson’s vetting process are not credible.

As the ‘Starmer Project’ staggers towards its death agony following the latest revelations concerning the security vetting of Mandelson, plus the likelihood of a massive defeat in the May local elections, this provides both an opportunity and a threat for the Labour Party.

 Starmer probably won’t be resigning soon due to external factors and the effect of his project on the Labour Party itself. The Iran debacle, local elections and above all the suppression of Party democracy have left a lack of an effective opposition in the Parliamentary Labour Party – destroyed by the Starmer Project’s manipulation of selection procedures – and a shortage of challengers for the leadership, who can bring about the radical change needed if Labour is to continue as a party of Government both now and in the longer term.  

Those who have read Paul Holden’s book The Fraud – described by Owen Jones as “meticulous, explosive, essential” – will know exactly what is meant by the term ‘Starmer project’ and be aware of its appalling, toxic impact on the Labour Party and UK politics. Those who haven’t, should do so – it is eye-opening and will cure you of any tendency to argue that ‘poor Sir Keir’, a ‘a lawyer and a decent bloke’, has probably been ‘manipulated’ by Mandelson, McSweeney and Labour Together. Wrong – McSweeney may have been the devious, invisible hand planning and guiding the project, but Starmer was up to his neck in it. He was the politician chosen to front a massive political scam that helped him become Labour leader and eventually put him and his clique into Government. He was a conscious participant in the project and still is. 

As the ship sinks and Cabinet loyalists huddle around to justify his increasingly ridiculous excuses, Starmer s striving to deflect responsibility away from himself by throwing former allies overboard – Mandelson. McSweeney, Josh Simons. At McSweeney’s leaving do, it is reported that Starmer even praised him as a great political strategist.

Indeed, the strategy (or ‘fraud’) that enabled Starmer to win the Labour leadership contest was a ‘clever’ one in the worst sense of the word. It was concocted by McSweeney and carried out in plain sight. Starmer posed as a successor to Corbyn – a socialist and a progressive internationalist.  His ten promises, promoted during his leadership campaign, ticked all the right boxes for Party members, but this was just a means to outflank Rebecca Long-Bailey and attract support. As we know now, it was just a con devised by McSweeney based on the polling of members, funded dubiously and for the project’s use.  Once elected the fake promises were ditched and the real Sir Keir emerged – a right-wing authoritarian, who set about purging those who opposed him.

As Paul Holden documents in his book, McSweeney and his allies carried out a series of secret machinations, dirty tricks and questionable funding arrangements to facilitate success. ‘Success’ meant winning the leadership and then destroying Corbynism and any effective opposition from the left or even the centre. This was achieved by the purges of life-long socialists, many of them Jewish comrades, deliberately using antisemitism allegations as a weaponised tool to promote this, backed up by underhand online techniques to whip it up into a crisis.

McSweeney also tried to undermine and take down media websites like The Canary who were beginning to expose what was really happening, just as Josh Simons tried to do later with journalists, including Holden, who were investigating the questionable activities of Labour Together – except he was caught out and forced to resign from the Cabinet.

CLPs were also suspended and prevented from selecting local candidates, although one of Starmer’s ten ‘promises’ was to protect Party democracy! This was orchestrated by McSweeney, and it is alleged that Mandelson even provided advice on which candidates to exclude.

As Holden says, the project “radically reshaped the Labour Party at every level, primarily to neutralise oppositional forces and disempower party members. One small, right-wing element of the Labour coalition effectively captured the party. This freed Starmer to move Labour to the right on nearly every political issue.”

We have seen the disastrous results of this in Labour’s dismal performance in Government: a failure to tackle poverty and inequality, support for Trump and Israel, legal attacks on human rights, shadowing Reform’s policy on immigration and so on.  The resulting loss of tens of thousands of members and local representatives means that the Labour Party has been hollowed out. Today it is less of a movement of activists in touch with communities and more a Party of time-serving politicians and bureaucrats many of whom owe allegiance to Starmer, and, until recently. McSweeney.

But now the Starmer project is falling apart. Ironically it is a victim of its own toxic culture and modus operandi. Having won a massive electoral majority due to the vagaries of the UK electoral system – an unprecedented 412 seats based on only 34% of the vote – the project seemed to have gamed the system via McSweeney’s strategy of making vague promises about ‘change’ and shadowing the right to avoid being outflanked.

With a Cabinet packed with loyalists it became easy to ‘fix’ the political agenda as required. Housing Secretary Steve Reed makes numerous appearances in The Fraud as a close long-term ally of McSweeney. Home Secretary Shabana Mahmoud and many others also feature, with links to and funding from Labour Together. The Cabinet – mainly a Starmer Project clique – embraced big business and proceeded to implement a programme of neo-liberal austerity – some of the worst aspects only abandoned because of protests by community groups and concern within the PLP – but still mainly intact.

On migration the approach was to mimic Reform. On foreign policy it was to appease Trump and support Israel’s destruction of Gaza – with minor ‘reservations’, while continuing to supply arms and even undermining civil liberties by proscribing Palestine Action. 

The decision to appoint Mandelson as US Ambassador was intended to help fix and solidify the relationship with Trump. It too must have seemed a ‘clever’ thing to do, another great plan of the ‘Starmer Project’. Of course, Starmer and McSweeney already knew all the key things about Mandelson’s past and McSweeney was a friend of his. As with the Starmer Project’s previous machinations and fixes, they thought they could easily get away with it, and the Cabinet was mainly tame and acquiescent. 

You would have thought that the ‘great strategist’ McSweeney might have identified the gathering storm around the Epstein files in the US and backed off.  Apparently not – a gross error that led to his own demise and could well finish off Sir Keir. These kinds of ‘mistakes’ happen when you have a political project which is devoid of diversity and any real democratic checks and balances, where differing opinions are not represented, let alone heard and respected, where real decisions are made behind closed doors.  

Starmer should never have appointed Mandelson – it was his own decision and mistake. Once further information about Mandelson’s activities were revealed in the Epstein files, Starmer should have resigned on the basis of incompetence and bringing the Labour Party and Government into disrepute. Instead, he threw McSweeney overboard and decided to cling on and fight to the bitter end. 

While there will be further investigations and revelations around the Mandelson appointment, we have sufficient ‘evidence’ to demand that Starmer sets a timetable for resignation. One that is acceptable to the Labour Party, that ensures an orderly succession.  We need an election process based on democratic procedures and principles which cannot be manipulated by a small clique as it was in 2020. Candidates will need to be open and transparent about their political programme and any previous association with McSweeney and the ‘Starmer Project’.   

To survive, the Party needs radical change – to restore internal Party democracy and enhance the diversity of views. We need an independent investigation into the ‘Starmer Project’ and Labour Together that holds the individual to account no matter what their current standing in the Party is.

Read Labour Hub’s interview with The Fraud author Paul Holden here. Read Bryn Griffiths’ introduction to his Labour Left Podcast interview with Paul Holden and watch the podcast here.  

 Frank Hansen is a former Councillor in the London Borough of Brent.

Image: https://www.flickr.com/photos/number10gov/54354501680. Creator: Simon Dawson / No 10 Downing Str |Credit: Simon Dawson / No 10 Downing Str Copyright: Crown copyright. License: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic CC BY-NC-ND 2.0Deed

Trump and King Charles brace for embarrassment during tense official visit

(REUTERS)

Matthew Rozsa 

April 26, 2026 |

ALTERNET

President Donald Trump plans on meeting with King Charles III on Monday — and if early reports are to be believed, the encounter could be quite embarrassing for both men.

“Trump has always been very receptive to the pageantry that comes with hobnobbing with royalty – but the King is also grappling with a family crisis that may cast another awkward shadow over his interactions with the president,” wrote The Independent's Alex Hannaford on Sunday. Citing both Trump’s criticism of Prime Minister Keir Starmer for not helping him in his war against Iran and the longstanding friendship between Trump, Charles’ brother Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor and the late pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, Hannaford pointed out that millions in America and the United Kingdom question why there have not been legal consequences in America as existed in Britain.

“In Washington, there is little of the reflexive deference that surrounds the monarchy at home. American political reporters – and British correspondents in the US – operate at a greater remove,” Hannaford wrote. “Here, an unanswered question could prove a provocation that invites a louder, more public demand for the truth.”

He added, “And this isn’t the only problem on the horizon for Charles. Not only will Charles be arriving as Trump publicly doubts the Special Relationship under Sir Keir’s stewardship, for some, the visit could be seen as a show of political appeasement of a controversial administration that is leaning more towards authoritarian instincts every day.”

Former Republican strategist Steve Schmidt warned King Charles III that if he visits Trump, the result will be a “brutal” humiliation for him.

“Lawmakers are ready to show their teeth, too,” Hannaford wrote. “While Congress lacks the statutory power to compel a foreign citizen to testify, any formal subpoena would be triggered if Mountbatten-Windsor ever sets foot on US soil. And a Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty (MLAT) could petition British courts to force a deposition on UK soil in any criminal investigation. If Democrats regain control of the House of Representatives (and/or Senate) in November, the current polite requests for interviews are likely to be replaced by a barrage of Oversight Committee subpoenas and televised hearings focused on the Epstein files.”

In addition to the controversies involving the Iran war and Epstein, King Charles III’s visit is also controversial because Trump is ripping out granite White House fixtures installed by the anti-monarchical president Thomas Jefferson to prepare for the monarch’s visit. The Washington Post described it as “his latest White House renovation: a new black granite path that the royals are expected to take to the Oval Office.”

He added, “… [T]he president [was] eager to replace decades-old beige Tennessee flagstone with his handpicked dark granite slabs before the royal visit,” with Trump bragging in a plaque that “such attention to detail is rarely seen in the modern era!’”

It is perhaps symbolically appropriate that Trump is preparing for the British royal’s visit by tearing out Jeffersonian institutions, given Trump’s deeper opposition to Jefferson’s political philosophy.

"His 'empire of liberty' offered the potential to dismantle the artificial hierarchies inherited from the past and imbue all aspects of life with the promise of freedom and happiness," Dean Caivano, an assistant professor of political theory at Lehigh University and author of "A Politics of All: Thomas Jefferson and Radical Democracy," told this author for Salon Magazine in 2024. "Although this idealized image of a free and harmonious American society is undeniably marred by the institution and legacy of slavery, overlooking the role of education and science as prerequisites for freedom and equality diminishes our ability to assess the historical and contemporary limits of American democracy critically."

He added that Trump’s attitude toward science "relies on reactionary, draconian, and dogmatic thinking. By launching a direct assault on the scientific community, Project 2025 undermines the foundation of an enlightened citizenry that Jefferson held in high regard. The project advocates for dramatic cuts to research and development, promotes climate denialism, and seeks to hyper-politicize public health and STEM fields."

White House scrambles as Australian flags hung to greet arrival of King Charles

David Edwards
April 24, 2026 

RAW STORY


King Charles III (left) with US President Donald Trump at Windsor Castle, Berkshire, before formally bidding farewell to the president on day two of their state visit to the UK, September 18, 2025. Aaron Chown/Pool via REUTERS/File Photo

The White House took swift action after Australian flags were placed on the streets of Washington, D.C., to mark the arrival of King Charles III of Britain.

On Friday, Photos shared on social media showed Australian flags lining 17th Street. Freelance reporter Andrew Leyden shared several of the photos on X.

"After a short lunch break (and geography lesson) DC public work crews have decided to replace the Australian flags with the British flag around the White House," Leyden explained several hours later.

Despite ‘Big Tariff’ Threat From Trump, UK Urged to ‘Raise, Not Abolish’ Tax on Tech Giants

“We need to stop kowtowing to him, stop offering him humiliating and unpopular ‘state’ visits, and start enacting economic policies that put the interest of people here ahead of Donald Trump,” said one campaigner.


A protester holds a balloon of a baby President Donald Trump at a demonstration in London as the US leader visits the United Kingdom on September 17, 2025.
(Photo by Vuk Valcic/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)

Jessica Corbett
Apr 24, 2026
COMMON DREAMS

After President Donald Trump threatened to impose a new tariff on the United Kingdom over its Digital Services Tax, the head of a UK economic justice organization on Friday called for standing up to the US leader and even increasing the levy.

The 2% tax on digital companies such as search engines and social media networks that derive value from UK users—which applies to US tech giants such as Apple, Amazon, and Alphabet’s Google—has generated significant revenue annually, including £808 million, or over $1 billion, for the 2024-25 financial year.

“We don’t like it when they target American companies... whether we like those companies or don’t like ‘em,” Trump—whose inauguration last year featured several ultrarich tech executives—said Thursday. He accused the UK of trying to “make an easy buck” and warned that “they better be careful.”

“If they don’t drop the tax, we’ll probably put a big tariff on the UK,” the president continued, suggesting that the tariff would be “more than what they’re getting” from the policy targeting Big Tech.

Responding in a Friday statement, Nick Dearden, director of UK-based advocacy group Global Justice Now, said that “Trump’s latest threats prove, yet again, that if you give in to a bully, they’ll just come back for more.”



Just months after striking a bilateral trade deal that notably did not alter the tax on tech companies, Trump and UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer signed an artificial intelligence pact last September. The latter, said Dearden, “rolled out the red carpet to Trump’s Big Tech barons.”

“But this wasn’t the end of the story. Rather, the pact has given Trump an ongoing vehicle to bully the British government,” the campaigner continued. “It’s time to admit that Stramer’s strategy towards Trump has been an abject failure. We should raise, not abolish the digital services tax, which has already raised billions of pounds for the British economy.”

“Trump won’t like this but that’s just too bad, we need to stop kowtowing to him, stop offering him humiliating and unpopular ‘state’ visits, and start enacting economic policies that put the interest of people here ahead of Donald Trump,” he argued—as the UK’s King Charles III and his wife Camilla, the queen consort, prepare to meet with Trump at the White House on Monday.

Asked about Trump’s tech tax threats, a spokesperson for Starmer’s office told The Guardian that “our position on that is unchanged... It is a hugely important tax to make sure that those businesses continue to pay their share. So it is a fair and proportionate approach to taxing business activities in the UK.”

As the newspaper noted:
The digital services tax is only meant to be an interim measure, and the UK government agreed in 2021 to phase it out, averting the threat of retaliatory tariffs on British products from the US.

The tax was meant to be replaced in 2024 with a new global system after the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) brokered a deal between 140 countries, including the UK, that proposed large multinational companies paying tax in the countries where they do business committed themselves to a minimum 15% corporation tax rate. Implementation has been beset with delays as a number of countries have continued to raise objections over the regime.

Trump’s tariff threat comes after he has lashed out at Starmer—and other European officials—in recent weeks over their limited support for his illegal war on Iran. The US leader suggested to the BBC this week that he and the UK prime minister could only “recover” if the Labour leader embraced stricter immigration policies and “opened the North Sea” to the fossil fuel industry.

“I’m here to serve the British people always, to have their interests and to make sure that I make the right decisions for them,” Starmer told the British broadcaster. “That is why I took the decision that we would not be dragged into the war in Iran.”

Pentagon considers suspending Spain from NATO, leaked email suggests

Copyright AP Photo

By Shona Murray

Published on 24/04/2026 - EURONEWS

An internal Pentagon email has revealed US anger at Spain and other NATO allies over blocked bases for Iran strikes and hints at pressure over defence spending.

A leaked email suggests the Pentagon has outlined a set of options aimed at penalising NATO countries that rejected calls to assist in the Iran war, suspending Spain’s membership of NATO, as well as undermining US support for the UK's territorial control of the Falklands.

The internal email describes the well-vented frustration in Washington with some NATO countries for blocking US forces from using air bases in their territories to refuel military aircraft, and from their airspace while en route to bomb Iran.

The refusal for access to basing and overflight rights - known as ABO - is detailed in the email first reported by Reuters as being "just the absolute baseline for NATO", according to an unnamed official in the report.

Meanwhile, a senior NATO source has told Euronews that the tone expressed in the email is “not surprising” given US President Donald Trump’s “unhappiness with Europe, and particularly Spain".

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has been the most vocal European voice against the US-Israel war in Iran.

From the earliest days of the war, when other countries offered quiet endorsement of the strikes, Spain denied the US access to use jointly-operated military bases on Spanish territory, rebuking the attacks in Iran as “unjustified and dangerous military intervention”.

The NATO source points out that Trump’s frustration with Spain goes back to Sánchez ’s refusal to increase military spending from 2.1% of GDP to 5% in line with the commitment from all other NATO allies, for which Trump described Spain as a “laggard.” “They have no excuse not to do this, but that’s all right. Maybe you should throw them out of NATO, frankly,” he said soon after.

“It goes back to the political gamesmanship that Sánchez is deploying to appease his political base,” said the source. “They’re the only country which said they don’t need to spend 5% on defence,” the source told Euronews.

At Trump's request, NATO allies agreed to increase defence spending to a historic 5% of GDP by 2035 at the alliance’s annual leaders' summit in The Hague last year. But Madrid insists Spain can reach its capability targets by spending 2%.

Meanwhile, Sánchez shut down questions about the report saying the government relies on “official documents and positions, not informal communications", he told reporters at an EU leaders summit in Cyprus on Friday.

The Pentagon email, which is reportedly from the higher echelons of the US Department of Defence, also considers seeking retribution against the UK after British Prime Minister Keir Starmer publicly refused to join the war.

The email considers reassessing US diplomatic support for longstanding European "imperial possessions", such as the Falkland Islands near Argentina.

The US State Department has long endorsed the UK as the official administrator of the Falkland Islands, after the 1982 war which saw Britain reconquer the islands.

But Argentina has always claimed the islands as its own, and its current President Javier Milei is a close Trump supporter.

Experts say it’s not possible for Spain’s NATO membership to be suspended by the US, but that Trump’s frequent criticism of the 77-year-old transatlantic alliance is seriously damaging.

“You can’t kick people out of NATO unless there’s been a material breach of process, which in the case of Spain there is absolutely no evidence,” said former British Army Captain, Dr. Patrick Bury.

“But he’s [Trump] run NATO down so much, can it survive the next three years?" he told Euronews during a phone interview.

NATO countries were "well within their rights to refuse access to the military bases," he said.

“In 1986, during US action against Libya, both France and Spain closed their air bases to the US, so there is a precedent for them doing that,” he added.

“There was no consultation with NATO over this war, and Iran is not NATO territory,” said Bury, who is a lecturer specialising in warfare and counter-terrorism at Bath University, UK.

He also questioned the rationale for whoever leaked the document, positing whether its publication is part of a more comprehensive strategy by the US administration to do harm to NATO.

Trump's verbal attacks and threats to withdraw from NATO are ever more frequent since the war in Iran. He has since dismissed the alliance as a "paper tiger", and accused allies of leaving him stranded over Iran.

“The bigger question is who leaked this and why did they do it?” asked Bury.

“Was it part of a wider drive to run down NATO, or to send a message to allies to agree to do something regards the Strait of Hormuz?”

The Strait of Hormuz - one of the world's most important international shipping routes - has been shut down because of the war in Iran.

Iran initially blockaded the Strait to disrupt Western shipping supplies, triggering ongoing chaos and sky-high energy prices.

Since then, the US has initiated its own blockade, ensuring the waterway is fully closed for shipping to and from Iranian ports. Attempts to resolve the crisis through diplomatic channels led by Pakistan and Turkey remain stalled.

UK

As oil giants reap super-profits from war on Iran, public support for Windfall Tax grows

Hub

Politicians calling for an end to the Windfall Tax should listen to the public, say campaigners, after new polling from Survation that found voters back the Windfall Tax by a margin of more than two to one, with support crossing party lines and stretching across all areas of the country.

Over half of the population say that ending the Windfall Tax now would be the wrong thing to do. Only 22% felt that it should be ended. And 41% of the public support the Windfall Tax on energy firms, compared to just 17% opposing it. 

Nearly two-thirds of the public believe that the energy industry is profiteering from the conflict in Iran and 47% believe that windfall taxes should be extended to more companies within the energy industry.

Meanwhile, 83% of the public are worried about rising energy costs as a result of the conflict with Iran, and 44% say they would be unable to afford the expected £228 annual increase in energy bills. A quarter of these respondents claim they would be “completely unable to pay my energy bill” if costs rose to this level.

Oil giants have said that they would consider investing more in the North Sea, which is now an ultra-mature and high cost basin, if the government removes the additional levy. However, recent history suggests oil companies will instead just give the extra profits to their shareholders rather than investing in more drilling.

The oil and gas industry has been engaged in a significant lobbying effort to have the current windfall tax – the Energy Profits Levy – repealed or ended early, securing support from some high profile politicians and parties. Both Reform UK and the Conservative Party have repeatedly called for it to be scrapped.

But support for the Windfall Tax continues among voters from all parties, according to the data from Survation.

Among those intending to vote for Reform UK in the next general election, 39% support the Tax with just 24% opposing it. For those thinking of voting Conservative, 44% still support it and 19% oppose it. 

Among Labour, Green and Liberal Democrat voters, support is even stronger – as is support for extending the taxes to other sections of the industry.

Backing for the Windfall Tax was also strong in all areas of the country, with people in Wales polling the strongest support for the levy. Earlier detailed polling in Scotland had shown 41% backing the Tax with 19% opposing it, but the new data suggests that this support has deepened with 44% now in favour of the Levy.

Recent figures have shown that the energy industry made £125bn in profits on their UK operations in the last 5 years and in the month since the conflict in the Middle East began, the share prices of energy companies have soared adding over £233bn to the market capitalisation of firms and resulting in a boost in the wealth of energy firm bosses. 

Simon Francis, End Fuel Poverty Coalition coordinator said: “This is not the moment to hand a tax break to the oil and gas industry and Ministers must hold firm with the Windfall Tax, while also examining any profiteering from the conflict among other sectors of the energy sector.

“Trump’s attacks on Iran, the damage to Qatari gas production and the disruption to supplies has led to spikes in the costs of heating oil and gas.

“But while households will feel the effects of this for months to come, the energy industry will continue to benefit from increased prices and a fresh wave of excess profits.” 

Robert Palmer, deputy director of Uplift said: “Politicians calling for an end to the Windfall Tax just as the oil and gas giants are about to make billions in bumper profits are tone deaf. Instead of siding with the profiteering oil industry, political parties should be standing up for billpayers who are facing a steep Trump Tax on everything from their energy bills, to petrol and food.

“Last time, when Russia invaded Ukraine, oil companies didn’t invest their windfall profits in more drilling, instead executives and shareholders got windfall payouts. The government needs to tune out the barrage of special pleading by the oil firms and their political cheerleaders, and focus on real solutions to this crisis. 

“The only way to bring down energy costs over the long term is to get off our reliance on oil and gas, and invest as fast as we can in renewables. More North Sea drilling will not take a penny off our bills, only boost the profits of fossil fuel companies.”

Labour MP Nadia Whittome agreed: “Drilling in the North Sea won’t make energy cheaper, despite what Badenoch or Farage say, because the price of gas is set by international markets. Expanding our clean energy supplies, on the other hand, would reduce our dependence on expensive fossil fuels and therefore lower bills. A Labour government must hold firm on our climate commitments and double down on renewables.”

Big profits for energy executives from Iran war

Drilling down into the figures, it’s clear that the bosses of some of Britain’s biggest energy companies have seen their personal fortunes surge by millions of pounds as a result of the conflict in the Middle East.

Analysis of shareholdings declared in annual reports and share price movements between 26th February and 27th March 2026 shows how energy chiefs may have benefited from the crisis, even as millions of households brace for a sharp rise in bills.

Among them, Harbour Energy’s Linda Z Cook saw the value of her shareholding rise by more than £4 million to £26 million. Harbour accounts for around 15% of the UK’s domestic oil and gas output and has been led by American Cook since 2021.

Meanwhile Shell’s Wael Sawan added nearly £1.8 million to take his stake to £13.2 million. At Centrica, Chris O’Shea saw the value of his shares rise by over £300,000, even as the British Gas owner’s boss told the BBC this month that higher household bills were “inescapable” and had previously said that it was “impossible to justify” his salary and rewards package.

At BP, interim boss Carol Howle saw her shares grow by over £500,000 during the period. Departed chief executive Murray Auchincloss, who held more than 1.8 million shares at the time of his departure, could have seen his stake rise to £10.6 million at current prices.

The picture is even more dramatic among the global giants whose share prices have been supercharged by the Middle East conflict. Chevron chief executive Michael Wirth saw the value of his near two-million-share stake rise by more than £44 million in a single month, taking his total holding to more than £312 million.

ExxonMobil’s Darren Woods added over £5 million to sit at more than £40 million, and TotalEnergies chief Patrick Pouyanné’s stake now stands at £39 million. Equinor, the Norwegian state-backed firm that supplies much of the gas the UK depends on, saw its shares rise more than 45%, adding nearly £700,000 to the personal stake of chief executive Anders Opedal.

Simon Francis again: “There are very few winners from the conflict in the Middle East, and most of those are the wealthy oil and gas bosses who help set the prices we all pay for our energy. Politicians must show whose side they are on: the households struggling with energy bills, or the millionaires calling for an early end to the Windfall Tax on North Sea profits.”

The figures come as wholesale gas prices remain at levels not seen since 2023. Average household energy bills are forecast to rise to £1,929 from 1st July 2026, an 18% increase on the current cap.

Separate End Fuel Poverty Coalition data shows that energy firms have already made more than £125 billion in profits on their UK operations since 2020. At current energy prices, the Government stands to collect substantial additional tax revenue via the Energy Profits Levy.

Caitlin Boswell, interim Deputy Director at Tax Justice UK said: “Different parts of the economy are set to make eye-watering paydays as they spot opportunities for profiteering from the US-Israeli war on Iran and immense human suffering, while ordinary people see their energy bills sky-rocket.  That’s why the Chancellor should urgently implement excess profits taxes on energy, defence and banking sectors – called for by wider civil society – to send a clear message that the UK won’t accept profiteering from war and crisis.

“This needs to be coupled with tax system reform that ensures the massive asset price rises, like stocks in energy companies, are taxed fairly. Failing to do so will see stock price explosions channel enormous sums of money to the pockets of the super-rich, while millions in the UK are made more vulnerable to the cost of living crisis.”

The full data also shows that 12 of the world’s biggest energy companies added more than £233 billion in combined market value in a single month. In the EU, a report commissioned by Greenpeace Germany suggests that oil companies are making €81.4 million in extra profits every day from skyrocketing fuel prices since the start of the war on Iran, or around €2.5 billion in additional profits for March alone.

Jonathan Bean, Fuel Poverty Action spokesperson, said: “The Government must act urgently to stop more obscene energy profiteering from war, which will leave millions unable to afford the essential energy they need.  Windfall Tax loopholes must be removed and fair wealth taxes introduced.”

The ceasefire won’t bring down bills

Oil share prices fell with the announcement this week of a ceasefire in the conflict – because a ceasefire is bad for profits. But could the fragile ceasefire bring domestic energy bills back down? Simon Francis was pessimistic: “The damage to household energy bills has been done. All households will feel the pain from 1st July when the next Ofgem price cap period starts. For as long as our energy system is hooked on oil and gas prices, history will keep repeating itself and our bills will be at the mercy of decisions taken by Trump, Putin and Gulf States.”

Prime Minister Keir Starmer said this week that he was “fed up with the fact that families across the country see their bills go up and down on energy, businesses’ bills go up and down on energy because of the actions of Putin or Trump across the world.”

But others suggested this was a cop-out. Labour peer Prem Sikka pointed out that energy costs were high even before invasions by Putin and Trump and that the “Ofgem pricing formula guarantees exorbitant corporate profits.” He added: “It can all be ended by nationalization.”

Sign the petition to demand higher taxes on companies profiteering from the crisis here.

Image: https://milestonemagazine.com/3-global-businesses-that-have-thrived-during-the-pandemic/ Licence: Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported CC BY-SA 3.0 Deed

 

NATO Allies Adopt Evasive Policies on US War in Iran

by Ted Galen Carpenter | Apr 17, 2026 

Trump administration officials are discovering that a daunting number of longstanding U.S. allies and security clients are adopting hedging policies or even openly opposing Washington’s decision to wage war against Iran.  That sobering reality has become even clearer over the past week than it was during the earlier stages of the armed conflict.  On April 12, the president called upon NATO members to join U.S. naval forces in blockading Iranian ports. The proposed move was in response to Tehran’s continuing efforts to selectively close the vital Strait of Hormuz to foreign shipping.

However, most of Washington’s alliance partners refused to join the retaliatory blockade. British prime minister Keir Starmer was especially blunt and negative. The U.K. is “not supporting” the U.S. blockade of Iranian ports, Starmer stated, insisting that the country would not get “dragged in” to the Iran war.  Starmer, along with French President Emmanuel Macron, instead proposed intensified international efforts, including a conference, to secure an effective agreement to reopen the strait.

The extensive allied refusal regarding Washington’s blockade plans reflects growing European dissatisfaction with overall U.S. policy toward Iran and, indeed, with Trump’s entire approach to world affairs. Concerned longtime proponents of close transatlantic security cooperation are expressing mounting worries that disagreements between the United States and its principal European allies about Iran policy could lead to a fatal breach in NATO.

European leaders and their publics clearly are getting restless. Serge Schmemann, the Moscow bureau chief for the New York Times, emphasizes the extent of the change.  “Mr. Trump’s war on Iran, about which NATO allies were not consulted and in which they subsequently declined to participate, has made clear that Europeans no longer defer to Mr. Trump as the de facto “‘leader of the free world.’”

At the same time, European leaders have tried to avoid directly antagonizing President Trump.  Achieving such a balance is not easy.  Trump expressed fury at NATO allies who have failed to support Washington’s intervention against Iran. Even before the latest intra-alliance spat over establishing a blockade, the president denounced such allies as “cowards.” Administration officials also are examining ways to punish uncooperative Alliance partners.  Secretary of State Marco Rubio echoed and amplified Trump’s earlier doubts about the continuing value of NATO to America’s security. “Why are we in NATO? You have to ask that question. Why do we send trillions of dollars and have all of these American forces stationed in the region, if in our time of need, we won’t be allowed to use those bases?” Rubio said during an interview with Fox News in early April.  The refusal of most NATO members to authorize U.S. airstrikes and other offensive operations against targets in Iran has especially irritated administration officials.

However, as Wall Street Journal columnists Linas Kojalaand and Vytautas Leškevičius point out, with the notable and ostentatious exception of Spain, the most significant and influential Alliance members, including Britain, France, and Italy, have all quietly assisted the U.S. war effort in other ways.  The outcome has been a bit of a muddle. “Politically, the war with Iran has widened the gap between Washington and many European governments. Operationally, it has underscored how heavily the U.S. still relies on Europe – and how cooperative most European governments are.”

European NATO leaders seem to be trying to have it both ways.  By condemning Washington’s war of aggression against Iran and the widespread economic disruption that the conflict has caused, those countries maximize their ability to win the plaudits of outraged populations and governments around the world.  Yet providing quiet backing for at least some U.S military operations and diplomatic efforts to limit Iran’s power and influence placates other countries–especially those in the Middle East – that worry about both the clerical regime’s current conduct and its long-term strategic ambitions.

It is a very delicate balancing act on several levels, and it remains to be seen if European political elites can carry it off.  Important factions within the U.S. diplomatic, intelligence, and military communities may well sympathize with at least some of the European objections to the Trump administration’s Iran policy.  However, hardliners in those same U.S. institutions are not pleased with the perceived reluctance of other NATO members to support an armed intervention that the administration regards as a high priority. Worse, Trump himself has expressed vitriolic displeasure at what he considers unreliability at best and outright betrayal at worst.  His anger is not a trivial matter.  Even a lame-duck president with low domestic public approval ratings exercises a dominant role in U.S. foreign policy. Policy differences about the Iran war have already exacerbated transatlantic tensions, and if the war does not end quickly, those tensions are almost certain to worsen dramatically.

Dr. Ted Galen Carpenter is a senior fellow at the Randolph Bourne Institute and the Libertarian Institute. He is also a contributing editor to National Security Journal and The American Conservative. He also served in various senior policy positions during a 37-year career at the Cato Institute. Dr. Carpenter is the author of 13 books and more than 1,600 articles on defense, foreign policy and civil liberties issues. His latest book is Unreliable Watchdog: The News Media and U.S. Foreign Policy (2022).