Sarah Ingham: With this Government it’s always law-law not war-war

Dr Sarah Ingham is the author of The Military Covenant: its impact on civil-military relations in Britain.

“Moving to warfighting readiness”; “maximises the UK’s warfighting capabilities”; “prepare for warfighting at scale” …

Launched a fortnight ago the Strategic Defence Review aimed to up Britain’s readiness for conflict. “We must meet the danger head on,” declared Prime Minister Starmer.

A week ago, Israel met danger head on, launching Operation Rising Lion. It aims to stop Iran developing a nuclear bomb.

As Foreign Secretary Lammy said on Monday, Iran’s leader Ayatollah Khamenei has described the Jewish state as a “cancerous tumour” which should be “removed and eradicated”. It is unsurprising that Israel views a nuclear Iran as an existential threat.

If it puts a stop to Tehran’s nuclear ambitions, Israel is owed a huge debt of gratitude, not only from the West but from the wider Middle East. It is risking its blood and treasure to make the world safer. As German Chancellor Merz said on Tuesday, it is doing the dirty work for all of us.

Britain should be giving Israel 100 per cent support. Instead, the Labour government equivocates. Actions speak far louder than words, especially if they are PM Starmer’s impotent bleats about “de-escalation”.

Should Israel’s Prime Minister enter this country, he could be arrested. Last November, the International Criminal Court issued a warrant in respect of Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Yoav Gallant for alleged war crimes in connection with Gaza. Although No10 said it would not comment on specific cases, the government would apparently fulfil its legal obligations. Given that it caved into an advisory opinion from International Court of Justice and surrendered the Chagos Islands at vast expense to the taxpayer, it would surely be as craven to the ICC.  Netanyahu: you’re nicked.

In September the government suspended 30 export licences to Israel, related to F16 fighter jet components among other equipment. The (thankfully) still unincarcerated Israeli PM denounced the ban as “shameful”.  Oxfam, however, complained the ban did not go far enough and last month questioned whether the UK is “complicit in war crimes”.  (After the abuse in Haiti, the charity’s claim to any moral high ground is surely a tad shaky.)

Just last week, the Starmer government sanctioned two Israeli ministers, freezing their assets and imposing travel bans for “incitement of West Bank violence”.  Itamar Ben-Gvir shrugged it off: “We survived Pharaoh, we will also survive Keir Starmer. I will continue to work for Israel and the people of Israel without fear or intimidation.”

The Strategic Defence Review invoked “allies” 75 times, mostly in the NATO context. The alliance means that the UK “will never fight alone”. But as the Review states, NATO first, does not mean NATO only: “We remain committed to our allies and partners across the world as our security is closely connected.”

Has this Labour government even read its own Review?

The world’s security – to which Britain is so connected – would deteriorate with a nuclear Iran. Busy sanctioning, banning and preparing to prosecute, ministers give the impression that far from being an ally, Israel should be treated as an adversary.

PM Starmer and his Cabinet seem to have forgotten that since late 2023 the Royal Navy has been deployed to the Red Sea to protect global shipping and deter attacks from the Yemen-based Houthis.  Like Hamas, responsible for the October 7 massacre, and Hezbollah which destroyed Lebanon, the Houthis are Iran’s proxies.

It would have been in the UK’s strategic interests – if not necessarily in Labour’s party-political interests – for ministers to do less grandstanding about punishing democratically-elected Israeli politicians and offer more support for Israel’s readiness to take on Tehran-backed terrorists, and now Tehran itself.

“Country first, party second”  was invoked almost as often  “toolmaker” pre-General Election. Now in power, Labour is aware of the rising threat from independents and the views of its own supporters for whom Israel/Gaza is anathema.

Since the Islamic Revolution of 1979, Iran has been a malign theocratic basket-case.

During the Iran-Iraq War 1980-88, children were brainwashed into martyring themselves, running into minefields and blowing themselves up to clear the way for tanks. In 2022 writer Salman Rushdie was attacked and severely injured, his assailant motivated by the fatwa – or death decree – issued by Ayatollah Khomeini in 1989.  And let’s not start on the decades of oppression of Iranian women. Or the public hangings from cranes.

Despite the horror it has inflicted upon the outside world, Iran’s internal affairs are a matter for Iranians. Regime change is not something outsiders should involve themselves in.

As Operation Rising Lion continues, with or without US help, and history could well be being made. War can be waged to create a better peace – even in Gaza.

Meanwhile, for all the SDR’s talk about warfighting readiness, the PM and his ministers have preferred to bind Israel’s war leaders in legal red tape.

Yesterday,  the Spectator reported that Attorney-General Lord Hermer – “clumsy” in recently invoking Nazi Germany – has advised that Britain’s Armed Forces should only be deployed if  Britain or allies (like Jordan)  are attacked.

In A Journey, former PM Tony Blair describes the post-9/11 retaliatory strike on Afghanistan in October 2001. US planes left from Diego Garcia on the Chagos Islands “under permission from the UK government”.  Whether formal permission is still needed is unclear. Having ceded Chagos’ sovereignty, has the Starmer government also given up national influence just before one of the most significant military interventions in decades?

In choosing law-law over practical efforts to help Israel in its hour of need, the Starmer government is relegating Britain from global player to irrelevant spectator.