Ref 29% + 1 Lab 21% + 3 Con 16% - 2 Green 14% + 1 LD 10% -2
Fieldwork 4th to 6th March
Badenoch working her magic touch.
She's been too gungho, especially given Trump's latest nonsense. Why send an aircraft carrier with all the cost and risk involved? Let him fight his own war.
Nonsense. We should have sent in our carrier right from the start.
Why?
We weren't part of the planning, such as objectives, rules of engagement or endgame.
No matter how vile the Iranian regime is, it isn't our war nor in our strategic interrst.
It is in our strategic interest to defeat the Iranian regime - one that has been targetting us and our interests for decades. Pathetically hiding behind others, like Ireland does, is weak, makes us a total irrelevance and undermines our credibility worldwide.
We are about to find out the geopolitical consequences of taking a back seat and putting our fingers in our ears, and it won't be pretty.
We won't be taken seriously again.
The US is not attempting to defeat the regime, they are happy for them to stay in place, treating people like shit, just as long as they genuflect to the US every morning.
This has nothing to do with bringing democracy to Iran.
Ref 29% + 1 Lab 21% + 3 Con 16% - 2 Green 14% + 1 LD 10% -2
Fieldwork 4th to 6th March
Badenoch working her magic touch.
She's been too gungho, especially given Trump's latest nonsense. Why send an aircraft carrier with all the cost and risk involved? Let him fight his own war.
Nonsense. We should have sent in our carrier right from the start.
Why?
We weren't part of the planning, such as objectives, rules of engagement or endgame.
No matter how vile the Iranian regime is, it isn't our war nor in our strategic interrst.
It is in our strategic interest to defeat the Iranian regime - one that has been targetting us and our interests for decades. Pathetically hiding behind others, like Ireland does, is weak, makes us a total irrelevance and undermines our credibility worldwide.
We are about to find out the geopolitical consequences of taking a back seat and putting our fingers in our ears, and it won't be pretty.
We won't be taken seriously again.
LOL. Just meekly following Bibi and Trump’s lead is not going to get us taken seriously.
Ref 29% + 1 Lab 21% + 3 Con 16% - 2 Green 14% + 1 LD 10% -2
Fieldwork 4th to 6th March
Badenoch working her magic touch.
She's been too gungho, especially given Trump's latest nonsense. Why send an aircraft carrier with all the cost and risk involved? Let him fight his own war.
Nonsense. We should have sent in our carrier right from the start.
We'd have a sunker Carrier and Body Bags returning home now if we had and who would YOU have been blaming.
NOT OUR WAR!
Stay Out!
Our ex pats in the region are exactly that ex-pats , many of them there to slag off our Country , how great they are and how crap the UK is, they made their bed, tough shit. The genuine majority should be helped and supported and it;s up to Gulf States to protect them. We should offer support no more. NON aggressive support.
Holidaymakers should and are being helped and slowly getting out!
Lets remind everyone of one FACT!
One drone has fallen on a soverign UK air base. The most accurate reports suggest it was Russian made, fired by Hezbollah probably from remote Labanon area!
RAF and others are now intercepting drone, you CANNOT stop every drone and Badenoch and Farage cannot be allowed to ghoulishly cheer any drone that falls as some sort of sick excuse for their desperation to go to war!
Every drone that stops another Kuwait City tower from burning is a win - that will be appreciated in the region.
We didn't start the war. But we shouldn't sit on our hands either if we can help prevent damage.
Personally, I'd extend that to hunting down the launch sites within Iran too. But I appreciate that is further than some would go. Happy for that subject to be debated in Parliament.
If Kuwait wants to stop drones being launched at Kuwait, then Kuwait can bomb the launch sites. Likewise UAE, Qatar and Bahrain. We can sell them the hardware.
Ref 29% + 1 Lab 21% + 3 Con 16% - 2 Green 14% + 1 LD 10% -2
Fieldwork 4th to 6th March
Badenoch working her magic touch.
She's been too gungho, especially given Trump's latest nonsense. Why send an aircraft carrier with all the cost and risk involved? Let him fight his own war.
Nonsense. We should have sent in our carrier right from the start.
We'd have a sunker Carrier and Body Bags returning home now if we had and who would YOU have been blaming.
NOT OUR WAR!
Stay Out!
Our ex pats in the region are exactly that ex-pats , many of them there to slag off our Country , how great they are and how crap the UK is, they made their bed, tough shit. The genuine majority should be helped and supported and it;s up to Gulf States to protect them. We should offer support no more. NON aggressive support.
Holidaymakers should and are being helped and slowly getting out!
Lets remind everyone of one FACT!
One drone has fallen on a soverign UK air base. The most accurate reports suggest it was Russian made, fired by Hezbollah probably from remote Labanon area!
RAF and others are now intercepting drone, you CANNOT stop every drone and Badenoch and Farage cannot be allowed to ghoulishly cheer any drone that falls as some sort of sick excuse for their desperation to go to war!
I saw your name. And then instantly skipped over your shite and didn't read it.
Ref 29% + 1 Lab 21% + 3 Con 16% - 2 Green 14% + 1 LD 10% -2
Fieldwork 4th to 6th March
Badenoch working her magic touch.
She's been too gungho, especially given Trump's latest nonsense. Why send an aircraft carrier with all the cost and risk involved? Let him fight his own war.
Nonsense. We should have sent in our carrier right from the start.
Why?
We weren't part of the planning, such as objectives, rules of engagement or endgame.
No matter how vile the Iranian regime is, it isn't our war nor in our strategic interrst.
It is in our strategic interest to defeat the Iranian regime - one that has been targetting us and our interests for decades. Pathetically hiding behind others, like Ireland does, is weak, makes us a total irrelevance and undermines our credibility worldwide.
We are about to find out the geopolitical consequences of taking a back seat and putting our fingers in our ears, and it won't be pretty.
We won't be taken seriously again.
LOL. Just meekly following Bibi and Trump’s lead is not going to get us taken seriously.
Nah, we've seen Trumps tweets. He has nothing but contempt for us and our military, not just recently but also in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Yet still our right wingers think we should follow him around like a puppy. It is embarrassing.
Ref 29% + 1 Lab 21% + 3 Con 16% - 2 Green 14% + 1 LD 10% -2
Fieldwork 4th to 6th March
Badenoch working her magic touch.
She's been too gungho, especially given Trump's latest nonsense. Why send an aircraft carrier with all the cost and risk involved? Let him fight his own war.
Nonsense. We should have sent in our carrier right from the start.
Why?
We weren't part of the planning, such as objectives, rules of engagement or endgame.
No matter how vile the Iranian regime is, it isn't our war nor in our strategic interrst.
The US and Israel are quite capable of razing Tehran and Beirut to the ground, killing 10s of 1000s of innocent civilians, without our help. Why would the UK want to be involved in an illegal war? Some crazed blood lust only satisfied by bombing women and children? If the concern is about Iranian strikes on the gulf states then the most effective action would be pressure on the US and Israel to stop bombing them. I appreciate this correlation/causation might be a bit simple for some people but Iran wasn't bombing the gulf states before the US and Israel attacked them.
Ref 29% + 1 Lab 21% + 3 Con 16% - 2 Green 14% + 1 LD 10% -2
Fieldwork 4th to 6th March
Badenoch working her magic touch.
She's been too gungho, especially given Trump's latest nonsense. Why send an aircraft carrier with all the cost and risk involved? Let him fight his own war.
Nonsense. We should have sent in our carrier right from the start.
We'd have a sunker Carrier and Body Bags returning home now if we had and who would YOU have been blaming.
NOT OUR WAR!
Stay Out!
Our ex pats in the region are exactly that ex-pats , many of them there to slag off our Country , how great they are and how crap the UK is, they made their bed, tough shit. The genuine majority should be helped and supported and it;s up to Gulf States to protect them. We should offer support no more. NON aggressive support.
Holidaymakers should and are being helped and slowly getting out!
Lets remind everyone of one FACT!
One drone has fallen on a soverign UK air base. The most accurate reports suggest it was Russian made, fired by Hezbollah probably from remote Labanon area!
RAF and others are now intercepting drone, you CANNOT stop every drone and Badenoch and Farage cannot be allowed to ghoulishly cheer any drone that falls as some sort of sick excuse for their desperation to go to war!
Every drone that stops another Kuwait City tower from burning is a win - that will be appreciated in the region.
We didn't start the war. But we shouldn't sit on our hands either if we can help prevent damage.
Personally, I'd extend that to hunting down the launch sites within Iran too. But I appreciate that is further than some would go. Happy for that subject to be debated in Parliament.
If Kuwait wants to stop drones being launched at Kuwait, then Kuwait can bomb the launch sites. Likewise UAE, Qatar and Bahrain. We can sell them the hardware.
So, you'd let the shaheed drones slam into civilian infrastructure? Even though we could help stop that?
Ref 29% + 1 Lab 21% + 3 Con 16% - 2 Green 14% + 1 LD 10% -2
Fieldwork 4th to 6th March
Badenoch working her magic touch.
She's been too gungho, especially given Trump's latest nonsense. Why send an aircraft carrier with all the cost and risk involved? Let him fight his own war.
Nonsense. We should have sent in our carrier right from the start.
We'd have a sunker Carrier and Body Bags returning home now if we had and who would YOU have been blaming.
NOT OUR WAR!
Stay Out!
Our ex pats in the region are exactly that ex-pats , many of them there to slag off our Country , how great they are and how crap the UK is, they made their bed, tough shit. The genuine majority should be helped and supported and it;s up to Gulf States to protect them. We should offer support no more. NON aggressive support.
Holidaymakers should and are being helped and slowly getting out!
Lets remind everyone of one FACT!
One drone has fallen on a soverign UK air base. The most accurate reports suggest it was Russian made, fired by Hezbollah probably from remote Labanon area!
RAF and others are now intercepting drone, you CANNOT stop every drone and Badenoch and Farage cannot be allowed to ghoulishly cheer any drone that falls as some sort of sick excuse for their desperation to go to war!
Every drone that stops another Kuwait City tower from burning is a win - that will be appreciated in the region.
We didn't start the war. But we shouldn't sit on our hands either if we can help prevent damage.
Personally, I'd extend that to hunting down the launch sites within Iran too. But I appreciate that is further than some would go. Happy for that subject to be debated in Parliament.
I do 100% agree that any further action needs parliament approval.
I can't for the life of me understand why Badenoch and Farage aren't crying out for parliament to decide.
Ref 29% + 1 Lab 21% + 3 Con 16% - 2 Green 14% + 1 LD 10% -2
Fieldwork 4th to 6th March
Badenoch working her magic touch.
She's been too gungho, especially given Trump's latest nonsense. Why send an aircraft carrier with all the cost and risk involved? Let him fight his own war.
Nonsense. We should have sent in our carrier right from the start.
Why?
We weren't part of the planning, such as objectives, rules of engagement or endgame.
No matter how vile the Iranian regime is, it isn't our war nor in our strategic interrst.
It is in our strategic interest to defeat the Iranian regime - one that has been targetting us and our interests for decades. Pathetically hiding behind others, like Ireland does, is weak, makes us a total irrelevance and undermines our credibility worldwide.
We are about to find out the geopolitical consequences of taking a back seat and putting our fingers in our ears, and it won't be pretty.
We won't be taken seriously again.
The US is not attempting to defeat the regime, they are happy for them to stay in place, treating people like shit, just as long as they genuflect to the US every morning.
This has nothing to do with bringing democracy to Iran.
Just like Venezuela.
The objective is to attempt to defeat the regime.
Again, another silly post littered with America and Trump reflecting the obsessions of liberals and Lefties.
Ref 29% + 1 Lab 21% + 3 Con 16% - 2 Green 14% + 1 LD 10% -2
Fieldwork 4th to 6th March
Badenoch working her magic touch.
She's been too gungho, especially given Trump's latest nonsense. Why send an aircraft carrier with all the cost and risk involved? Let him fight his own war.
Nonsense. We should have sent in our carrier right from the start.
Why?
We weren't part of the planning, such as objectives, rules of engagement or endgame.
No matter how vile the Iranian regime is, it isn't our war nor in our strategic interrst.
It is in our strategic interest to defeat the Iranian regime - one that has been targetting us and our interests for decades. Pathetically hiding behind others, like Ireland does, is weak, makes us a total irrelevance and undermines our credibility worldwide.
We are about to find out the geopolitical consequences of taking a back seat and putting our fingers in our ears, and it won't be pretty.
We won't be taken seriously again.
LOL. Just meekly following Bibi and Trump’s lead is not going to get us taken seriously.
Who said we were meek?
Meek is cowardly hiding behind inaction and inactivity until it's all over.
It's far better to be inside the tent and influencing decisions. And, yes, the US and Israel can be influenced.
Ref 29% + 1 Lab 21% + 3 Con 16% - 2 Green 14% + 1 LD 10% -2
Fieldwork 4th to 6th March
Badenoch working her magic touch.
She's been too gungho, especially given Trump's latest nonsense. Why send an aircraft carrier with all the cost and risk involved? Let him fight his own war.
Nonsense. We should have sent in our carrier right from the start.
We'd have a sunker Carrier and Body Bags returning home now if we had and who would YOU have been blaming.
NOT OUR WAR!
Stay Out!
Our ex pats in the region are exactly that ex-pats , many of them there to slag off our Country , how great they are and how crap the UK is, they made their bed, tough shit. The genuine majority should be helped and supported and it;s up to Gulf States to protect them. We should offer support no more. NON aggressive support.
Holidaymakers should and are being helped and slowly getting out!
Lets remind everyone of one FACT!
One drone has fallen on a soverign UK air base. The most accurate reports suggest it was Russian made, fired by Hezbollah probably from remote Labanon area!
RAF and others are now intercepting drone, you CANNOT stop every drone and Badenoch and Farage cannot be allowed to ghoulishly cheer any drone that falls as some sort of sick excuse for their desperation to go to war!
Every drone that stops another Kuwait City tower from burning is a win - that will be appreciated in the region.
We didn't start the war. But we shouldn't sit on our hands either if we can help prevent damage.
Personally, I'd extend that to hunting down the launch sites within Iran too. But I appreciate that is further than some would go. Happy for that subject to be debated in Parliament.
If Kuwait wants to stop drones being launched at Kuwait, then Kuwait can bomb the launch sites. Likewise UAE, Qatar and Bahrain. We can sell them the hardware.
So, you'd let the shaheed drones slam into civilian infrastructure? Even though we could help stop that?
Noted.
The Gulf States have plenty of armed forces to do that already. What do they need HMS PoW in the Eastern Mediterranean for?
If you want expertise in anti-shahed warfare speak to the Ukranians. They have the expertise and kit.
Ref 29% + 1 Lab 21% + 3 Con 16% - 2 Green 14% + 1 LD 10% -2
Fieldwork 4th to 6th March
Badenoch working her magic touch.
She's been too gungho, especially given Trump's latest nonsense. Why send an aircraft carrier with all the cost and risk involved? Let him fight his own war.
Nonsense. We should have sent in our carrier right from the start.
Why?
We weren't part of the planning, such as objectives, rules of engagement or endgame.
No matter how vile the Iranian regime is, it isn't our war nor in our strategic interrst.
The US and Israel are quite capable of razing Tehran and Beirut to the ground, killing 10s of 1000s of innocent civilians, without our help. Why would the UK want to be involved in an illegal war? Some crazed blood lust only satisfied by bombing women and children? If the concern is about Iranian strikes on the gulf states then the most effective action would be pressure on the US and Israel to stop bombing them. I appreciate this correlation/causation might be a bit simple for some people but Iran wasn't bombing the gulf states before the US and Israel attacked them.
Anyone who uses the phrase "illegal war" is basically a total idiot.
As is the rest of your post: have you looked up what the Iranian regime has done over recent weeks, yet alone the last few years or decades?
Ref 29% + 1 Lab 21% + 3 Con 16% - 2 Green 14% + 1 LD 10% -2
Fieldwork 4th to 6th March
Badenoch working her magic touch.
She's been too gungho, especially given Trump's latest nonsense. Why send an aircraft carrier with all the cost and risk involved? Let him fight his own war.
Nonsense. We should have sent in our carrier right from the start.
Why?
We weren't part of the planning, such as objectives, rules of engagement or endgame.
No matter how vile the Iranian regime is, it isn't our war nor in our strategic interrst.
It is in our strategic interest to defeat the Iranian regime - one that has been targetting us and our interests for decades. Pathetically hiding behind others, like Ireland does, is weak, makes us a total irrelevance and undermines our credibility worldwide.
We are about to find out the geopolitical consequences of taking a back seat and putting our fingers in our ears, and it won't be pretty.
We won't be taken seriously again.
LOL. Just meekly following Bibi and Trump’s lead is not going to get us taken seriously.
Nah, we've seen Trumps tweets. He has nothing but contempt for us and our military, not just recently but also in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Yet still our right wingers think we should follow him around like a puppy. It is embarrassing.
As referred to previously, rightwing outrage over the dodgy dossier and WMDs isn’t because of Blair’s evident duplicity, it’s because those righties were the most fervent cheerleaders for something that turned out to be a disaster, and they needed a get-out clause. They seemed to have learned nothing.
Ref 29% + 1 Lab 21% + 3 Con 16% - 2 Green 14% + 1 LD 10% -2
Fieldwork 4th to 6th March
Badenoch working her magic touch.
She's been too gungho, especially given Trump's latest nonsense. Why send an aircraft carrier with all the cost and risk involved? Let him fight his own war.
Nonsense. We should have sent in our carrier right from the start.
Why?
We weren't part of the planning, such as objectives, rules of engagement or endgame.
No matter how vile the Iranian regime is, it isn't our war nor in our strategic interrst.
It is in our strategic interest to defeat the Iranian regime - one that has been targetting us and our interests for decades. Pathetically hiding behind others, like Ireland does, is weak, makes us a total irrelevance and undermines our credibility worldwide.
We are about to find out the geopolitical consequences of taking a back seat and putting our fingers in our ears, and it won't be pretty.
We won't be taken seriously again.
Ukraine should be the Western priority right now, and the war of choice that the US has launched on Iran has led to more Patriot interceptors being used in a week than have been supplied to Ukraine over four years. At the same time Russian oil sales to India and China have soared with a massively boosted oil price.
This war on Iran is a massive gift to Russia. It harms British interests.
If Ukraine had been helped to win against Russia already then the calculus would be different, but as it is this war is massively self-harming.
And if China identifies US weakness as a result of this war and moves to take Taiwan then this war will be seen as an even more catastrophic unforced error.
Ref 29% + 1 Lab 21% + 3 Con 16% - 2 Green 14% + 1 LD 10% -2
Fieldwork 4th to 6th March
Badenoch working her magic touch.
She's been too gungho, especially given Trump's latest nonsense. Why send an aircraft carrier with all the cost and risk involved? Let him fight his own war.
Nonsense. We should have sent in our carrier right from the start.
Why?
We weren't part of the planning, such as objectives, rules of engagement or endgame.
No matter how vile the Iranian regime is, it isn't our war nor in our strategic interrst.
It is in our strategic interest to defeat the Iranian regime - one that has been targetting us and our interests for decades. Pathetically hiding behind others, like Ireland does, is weak, makes us a total irrelevance and undermines our credibility worldwide.
We are about to find out the geopolitical consequences of taking a back seat and putting our fingers in our ears, and it won't be pretty.
We won't be taken seriously again.
LOL. Just meekly following Bibi and Trump’s lead is not going to get us taken seriously.
Nah, we've seen Trumps tweets. He has nothing but contempt for us and our military, not just recently but also in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Yet still our right wingers think we should follow him around like a puppy. It is embarrassing.
You're quite right - that's all this issue is about for you.
In fact the combined Reform and Green vote is now 43% with MiC as the former have taken votes from the Tories from the right and the latter from Labour from the left. Add in the LDs though and the traditional big 3 parties of Conservative, Labour and LD combined are on 51%, so if their votes tactically vote for whichever of those 3 parties is best placed to beat Reform and the Greens they can still keep them out
Ref 29% + 1 Lab 21% + 3 Con 16% - 2 Green 14% + 1 LD 10% -2
Fieldwork 4th to 6th March
Badenoch working her magic touch.
She's been too gungho, especially given Trump's latest nonsense. Why send an aircraft carrier with all the cost and risk involved? Let him fight his own war.
Nonsense. We should have sent in our carrier right from the start.
We'd have a sunker Carrier and Body Bags returning home now if we had and who would YOU have been blaming.
NOT OUR WAR!
Stay Out!
Our ex pats in the region are exactly that ex-pats , many of them there to slag off our Country , how great they are and how crap the UK is, they made their bed, tough shit. The genuine majority should be helped and supported and it;s up to Gulf States to protect them. We should offer support no more. NON aggressive support.
Holidaymakers should and are being helped and slowly getting out!
Lets remind everyone of one FACT!
One drone has fallen on a soverign UK air base. The most accurate reports suggest it was Russian made, fired by Hezbollah probably from remote Labanon area!
RAF and others are now intercepting drone, you CANNOT stop every drone and Badenoch and Farage cannot be allowed to ghoulishly cheer any drone that falls as some sort of sick excuse for their desperation to go to war!
Every drone that stops another Kuwait City tower from burning is a win - that will be appreciated in the region.
We didn't start the war. But we shouldn't sit on our hands either if we can help prevent damage.
Personally, I'd extend that to hunting down the launch sites within Iran too. But I appreciate that is further than some would go. Happy for that subject to be debated in Parliament.
If Kuwait wants to stop drones being launched at Kuwait, then Kuwait can bomb the launch sites. Likewise UAE, Qatar and Bahrain. We can sell them the hardware.
So, you'd let the shaheed drones slam into civilian infrastructure? Even though we could help stop that?
Noted.
It's not about the geopolitics or our wider security interests though, for these people. Still less those of others.
It's all about how Trump has made them feel with his tweets, and how that looks with their social circle.
Ref 29% + 1 Lab 21% + 3 Con 16% - 2 Green 14% + 1 LD 10% -2
Fieldwork 4th to 6th March
Badenoch working her magic touch.
She's been too gungho, especially given Trump's latest nonsense. Why send an aircraft carrier with all the cost and risk involved? Let him fight his own war.
Nonsense. We should have sent in our carrier right from the start.
We'd have a sunker Carrier and Body Bags returning home now if we had and who would YOU have been blaming.
NOT OUR WAR!
Stay Out!
Our ex pats in the region are exactly that ex-pats , many of them there to slag off our Country , how great they are and how crap the UK is, they made their bed, tough shit. The genuine majority should be helped and supported and it;s up to Gulf States to protect them. We should offer support no more. NON aggressive support.
Holidaymakers should and are being helped and slowly getting out!
Lets remind everyone of one FACT!
One drone has fallen on a soverign UK air base. The most accurate reports suggest it was Russian made, fired by Hezbollah probably from remote Labanon area!
RAF and others are now intercepting drone, you CANNOT stop every drone and Badenoch and Farage cannot be allowed to ghoulishly cheer any drone that falls as some sort of sick excuse for their desperation to go to war!
I saw your name. And then instantly skipped over your shite and didn't read it.
One of the problems I have with the view taken by the more enthusiastic advocates of military action is that if Iran maintained its regime but just did Trump's bidding he'd be fine with that. The war could end with US approval with a practically identical regime in place.
Another concern is that I have no faith the US military under Trump will shy away from things like bombing water facilities (I did mention a few days ago that Iran's already in very rough shape over water, and this had helped fuel recent protests). That will lead to huge suffering of primarily innocent non-combatants.
We should retaliate against sites/facilities that are attacking our own bases. We should not give a blank cheque to man with the moral standing of Donald Trump.
Ref 29% + 1 Lab 21% + 3 Con 16% - 2 Green 14% + 1 LD 10% -2
Fieldwork 4th to 6th March
Badenoch working her magic touch.
She's been too gungho, especially given Trump's latest nonsense. Why send an aircraft carrier with all the cost and risk involved? Let him fight his own war.
Nonsense. We should have sent in our carrier right from the start.
Why?
We weren't part of the planning, such as objectives, rules of engagement or endgame.
No matter how vile the Iranian regime is, it isn't our war nor in our strategic interrst.
It is in our strategic interest to defeat the Iranian regime - one that has been targetting us and our interests for decades. Pathetically hiding behind others, like Ireland does, is weak, makes us a total irrelevance and undermines our credibility worldwide.
We are about to find out the geopolitical consequences of taking a back seat and putting our fingers in our ears, and it won't be pretty.
We won't be taken seriously again.
LOL. Just meekly following Bibi and Trump’s lead is not going to get us taken seriously.
Nah, we've seen Trumps tweets. He has nothing but contempt for us and our military, not just recently but also in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Yet still our right wingers think we should follow him around like a puppy. It is embarrassing.
You're quite right - that's all this issue is about for you.
Trump's tweets.
Yes, this is the war of Trump's egomania. Nothing more to it than that.
Ref 29% + 1 Lab 21% + 3 Con 16% - 2 Green 14% + 1 LD 10% -2
Fieldwork 4th to 6th March
Badenoch working her magic touch.
She's been too gungho, especially given Trump's latest nonsense. Why send an aircraft carrier with all the cost and risk involved? Let him fight his own war.
Nonsense. We should have sent in our carrier right from the start.
We'd have a sunker Carrier and Body Bags returning home now if we had and who would YOU have been blaming.
NOT OUR WAR!
Stay Out!
Our ex pats in the region are exactly that ex-pats , many of them there to slag off our Country , how great they are and how crap the UK is, they made their bed, tough shit. The genuine majority should be helped and supported and it;s up to Gulf States to protect them. We should offer support no more. NON aggressive support.
Holidaymakers should and are being helped and slowly getting out!
Lets remind everyone of one FACT!
One drone has fallen on a soverign UK air base. The most accurate reports suggest it was Russian made, fired by Hezbollah probably from remote Labanon area!
RAF and others are now intercepting drone, you CANNOT stop every drone and Badenoch and Farage cannot be allowed to ghoulishly cheer any drone that falls as some sort of sick excuse for their desperation to go to war!
Every drone that stops another Kuwait City tower from burning is a win - that will be appreciated in the region.
We didn't start the war. But we shouldn't sit on our hands either if we can help prevent damage.
Personally, I'd extend that to hunting down the launch sites within Iran too. But I appreciate that is further than some would go. Happy for that subject to be debated in Parliament.
If Kuwait wants to stop drones being launched at Kuwait, then Kuwait can bomb the launch sites. Likewise UAE, Qatar and Bahrain. We can sell them the hardware.
So, you'd let the shaheed drones slam into civilian infrastructure? Even though we could help stop that?
Noted.
I referred to bombing launch sites, not intercepting drones in the air.
But on the latter point, why should we be involved defending anywhere other than UK territory and bases?
If any country has an obligation to defend the region, it is the one that started the war.
Ref 29% + 1 Lab 21% + 3 Con 16% - 2 Green 14% + 1 LD 10% -2
Fieldwork 4th to 6th March
Badenoch working her magic touch.
She's been too gungho, especially given Trump's latest nonsense. Why send an aircraft carrier with all the cost and risk involved? Let him fight his own war.
Nonsense. We should have sent in our carrier right from the start.
Why?
We weren't part of the planning, such as objectives, rules of engagement or endgame.
No matter how vile the Iranian regime is, it isn't our war nor in our strategic interrst.
I'd say it's very much in our strategic interest to remove the Iranian regime. My objection is just on the grounds of practicality - will the benefits outweigh the costs? My guess is not. Also, if Trump is going to rubbish the UK's previous conyributions, fuck him, we won't bother.
Ref 29% + 1 Lab 21% + 3 Con 16% - 2 Green 14% + 1 LD 10% -2
Fieldwork 4th to 6th March
Badenoch working her magic touch.
She's been too gungho, especially given Trump's latest nonsense. Why send an aircraft carrier with all the cost and risk involved? Let him fight his own war.
Nonsense. We should have sent in our carrier right from the start.
We'd have a sunker Carrier and Body Bags returning home now if we had and who would YOU have been blaming.
NOT OUR WAR!
Stay Out!
Our ex pats in the region are exactly that ex-pats , many of them there to slag off our Country , how great they are and how crap the UK is, they made their bed, tough shit. The genuine majority should be helped and supported and it;s up to Gulf States to protect them. We should offer support no more. NON aggressive support.
Holidaymakers should and are being helped and slowly getting out!
Lets remind everyone of one FACT!
One drone has fallen on a soverign UK air base. The most accurate reports suggest it was Russian made, fired by Hezbollah probably from remote Labanon area!
RAF and others are now intercepting drone, you CANNOT stop every drone and Badenoch and Farage cannot be allowed to ghoulishly cheer any drone that falls as some sort of sick excuse for their desperation to go to war!
I saw your name. And then instantly skipped over your shite and didn't read it.
Ref 29% + 1 Lab 21% + 3 Con 16% - 2 Green 14% + 1 LD 10% -2
Fieldwork 4th to 6th March
Badenoch working her magic touch.
She's been too gungho, especially given Trump's latest nonsense. Why send an aircraft carrier with all the cost and risk involved? Let him fight his own war.
Nonsense. We should have sent in our carrier right from the start.
Why?
We weren't part of the planning, such as objectives, rules of engagement or endgame.
No matter how vile the Iranian regime is, it isn't our war nor in our strategic interrst.
It is in our strategic interest to defeat the Iranian regime - one that has been targetting us and our interests for decades. Pathetically hiding behind others, like Ireland does, is weak, makes us a total irrelevance and undermines our credibility worldwide.
We are about to find out the geopolitical consequences of taking a back seat and putting our fingers in our ears, and it won't be pretty.
We won't be taken seriously again.
Ukraine should be the Western priority right now, and the war of choice that the US has launched on Iran has led to more Patriot interceptors being used in a week than have been supplied to Ukraine over four years. At the same time Russian oil sales to India and China have soared with a massively boosted oil price.
This war on Iran is a massive gift to Russia. It harms British interests.
If Ukraine had been helped to win against Russia already then the calculus would be different, but as it is this war is massively self-harming.
And if China identifies US weakness as a result of this war and moves to take Taiwan then this war will be seen as an even more catastrophic unforced error.
I don't agree. I think both are.
We've been trying to contain Iran for 47 years. It's been a major exporter of terror and instability right across the region.
It needs defeating once and for all and, now it's started, I think we must be influencing those decisions.
Ref 29% + 1 Lab 21% + 3 Con 16% - 2 Green 14% + 1 LD 10% -2
Fieldwork 4th to 6th March
Badenoch working her magic touch.
She's been too gungho, especially given Trump's latest nonsense. Why send an aircraft carrier with all the cost and risk involved? Let him fight his own war.
Nonsense. We should have sent in our carrier right from the start.
We'd have a sunker Carrier and Body Bags returning home now if we had and who would YOU have been blaming.
NOT OUR WAR!
Stay Out!
Our ex pats in the region are exactly that ex-pats , many of them there to slag off our Country , how great they are and how crap the UK is, they made their bed, tough shit. The genuine majority should be helped and supported and it;s up to Gulf States to protect them. We should offer support no more. NON aggressive support.
Holidaymakers should and are being helped and slowly getting out!
Lets remind everyone of one FACT!
One drone has fallen on a soverign UK air base. The most accurate reports suggest it was Russian made, fired by Hezbollah probably from remote Labanon area!
RAF and others are now intercepting drone, you CANNOT stop every drone and Badenoch and Farage cannot be allowed to ghoulishly cheer any drone that falls as some sort of sick excuse for their desperation to go to war!
Every drone that stops another Kuwait City tower from burning is a win - that will be appreciated in the region.
We didn't start the war. But we shouldn't sit on our hands either if we can help prevent damage.
Personally, I'd extend that to hunting down the launch sites within Iran too. But I appreciate that is further than some would go. Happy for that subject to be debated in Parliament.
If Kuwait wants to stop drones being launched at Kuwait, then Kuwait can bomb the launch sites. Likewise UAE, Qatar and Bahrain. We can sell them the hardware.
So, you'd let the shaheed drones slam into civilian infrastructure? Even though we could help stop that?
Noted.
The Gulf States have plenty of armed forces to do that already. What do they need HMS PoW in the Eastern Mediterranean for?
If you want expertise in anti-shahed warfare speak to the Ukranians. They have the expertise and kit.
Clearly the "plenty" they have is not enough.
I have sufficient bandwitdth to separate out that Trump/Bibi started this conflagration - and we can be good world citizens by mitigating some of the impact of the consequences of that conflagration. We should step up and help protect the Gulf states from the consequences of Iran wildly lashing out at anybody that hosts US bases. Iran in turn killing 160 girls in a Kuwaiti school is something we should do all we can to prevent happening.
Ref 29% + 1 Lab 21% + 3 Con 16% - 2 Green 14% + 1 LD 10% -2
Fieldwork 4th to 6th March
Badenoch working her magic touch.
She's been too gungho, especially given Trump's latest nonsense. Why send an aircraft carrier with all the cost and risk involved? Let him fight his own war.
Nonsense. We should have sent in our carrier right from the start.
We'd have a sunker Carrier and Body Bags returning home now if we had and who would YOU have been blaming.
NOT OUR WAR!
Stay Out!
Our ex pats in the region are exactly that ex-pats , many of them there to slag off our Country , how great they are and how crap the UK is, they made their bed, tough shit. The genuine majority should be helped and supported and it;s up to Gulf States to protect them. We should offer support no more. NON aggressive support.
Holidaymakers should and are being helped and slowly getting out!
Lets remind everyone of one FACT!
One drone has fallen on a soverign UK air base. The most accurate reports suggest it was Russian made, fired by Hezbollah probably from remote Labanon area!
RAF and others are now intercepting drone, you CANNOT stop every drone and Badenoch and Farage cannot be allowed to ghoulishly cheer any drone that falls as some sort of sick excuse for their desperation to go to war!
Every drone that stops another Kuwait City tower from burning is a win - that will be appreciated in the region.
We didn't start the war. But we shouldn't sit on our hands either if we can help prevent damage.
Personally, I'd extend that to hunting down the launch sites within Iran too. But I appreciate that is further than some would go. Happy for that subject to be debated in Parliament.
If Kuwait wants to stop drones being launched at Kuwait, then Kuwait can bomb the launch sites. Likewise UAE, Qatar and Bahrain. We can sell them the hardware.
So, you'd let the shaheed drones slam into civilian infrastructure? Even though we could help stop that?
Noted.
Russian drones are slamming into civilian infrastructure in Ukraine and we’re not attacking Russia. Israeli and US missiles are slamming into civilian infrastructure in Iran and we’re not attacking them. Life is somewhat more complicated than you’re painting it.
Ref 29% + 1 Lab 21% + 3 Con 16% - 2 Green 14% + 1 LD 10% -2
Fieldwork 4th to 6th March
Badenoch working her magic touch.
She's been too gungho, especially given Trump's latest nonsense. Why send an aircraft carrier with all the cost and risk involved? Let him fight his own war.
Nonsense. We should have sent in our carrier right from the start.
Why?
We weren't part of the planning, such as objectives, rules of engagement or endgame.
No matter how vile the Iranian regime is, it isn't our war nor in our strategic interrst.
It is in our strategic interest to defeat the Iranian regime - one that has been targetting us and our interests for decades. Pathetically hiding behind others, like Ireland does, is weak, makes us a total irrelevance and undermines our credibility worldwide.
We are about to find out the geopolitical consequences of taking a back seat and putting our fingers in our ears, and it won't be pretty.
We won't be taken seriously again.
The US is not attempting to defeat the regime, they are happy for them to stay in place, treating people like shit, just as long as they genuflect to the US every morning.
This has nothing to do with bringing democracy to Iran.
Just like Venezuela.
The objective is to attempt to defeat the regime.
Again, another silly post littered with America and Trump reflecting the obsessions of liberals and Lefties.
That is not the objective. Trump himself has said that he wants to decide which nutter takes over. Same regime, just a different figurehead.
Ref 29% + 1 Lab 21% + 3 Con 16% - 2 Green 14% + 1 LD 10% -2
Fieldwork 4th to 6th March
Badenoch working her magic touch.
She's been too gungho, especially given Trump's latest nonsense. Why send an aircraft carrier with all the cost and risk involved? Let him fight his own war.
Nonsense. We should have sent in our carrier right from the start.
Why?
We weren't part of the planning, such as objectives, rules of engagement or endgame.
No matter how vile the Iranian regime is, it isn't our war nor in our strategic interrst.
It is in our strategic interest to defeat the Iranian regime - one that has been targetting us and our interests for decades. Pathetically hiding behind others, like Ireland does, is weak, makes us a total irrelevance and undermines our credibility worldwide.
We are about to find out the geopolitical consequences of taking a back seat and putting our fingers in our ears, and it won't be pretty.
We won't be taken seriously again.
LOL. Just meekly following Bibi and Trump’s lead is not going to get us taken seriously.
Who said we were meek?
Meek is cowardly hiding behind inaction and inactivity until it's all over.
It's far better to be inside the tent and influencing decisions. And, yes, the US and Israel can be influenced.
In what way do you think we should be influencing them? What do you think we should be getting them to do?
Ref 29% + 1 Lab 21% + 3 Con 16% - 2 Green 14% + 1 LD 10% -2
Fieldwork 4th to 6th March
Badenoch working her magic touch.
She's been too gungho, especially given Trump's latest nonsense. Why send an aircraft carrier with all the cost and risk involved? Let him fight his own war.
Nonsense. We should have sent in our carrier right from the start.
Why?
We weren't part of the planning, such as objectives, rules of engagement or endgame.
No matter how vile the Iranian regime is, it isn't our war nor in our strategic interrst.
I'd say it's very much in our strategic interest to remove the Iranian regime. My objection is just on the grounds of practicality - will the benefits outweigh the costs? My guess is not. Also, if Trump is going to rubbish the UK's previous conyributions, fuck him, we won't bother.
Tbf to Trump on a personal level, he didn’t turn up after a war was won (or lost), he didn’t turn up at all.
Ref 29% + 1 Lab 21% + 3 Con 16% - 2 Green 14% + 1 LD 10% -2
Fieldwork 4th to 6th March
Badenoch working her magic touch.
She's been too gungho, especially given Trump's latest nonsense. Why send an aircraft carrier with all the cost and risk involved? Let him fight his own war.
Nonsense. We should have sent in our carrier right from the start.
Why?
We weren't part of the planning, such as objectives, rules of engagement or endgame.
No matter how vile the Iranian regime is, it isn't our war nor in our strategic interrst.
It is in our strategic interest to defeat the Iranian regime - one that has been targetting us and our interests for decades. Pathetically hiding behind others, like Ireland does, is weak, makes us a total irrelevance and undermines our credibility worldwide.
We are about to find out the geopolitical consequences of taking a back seat and putting our fingers in our ears, and it won't be pretty.
We won't be taken seriously again.
Ukraine should be the Western priority right now, and the war of choice that the US has launched on Iran has led to more Patriot interceptors being used in a week than have been supplied to Ukraine over four years. At the same time Russian oil sales to India and China have soared with a massively boosted oil price.
This war on Iran is a massive gift to Russia. It harms British interests.
If Ukraine had been helped to win against Russia already then the calculus would be different, but as it is this war is massively self-harming.
And if China identifies US weakness as a result of this war and moves to take Taiwan then this war will be seen as an even more catastrophic unforced error.
I don't agree. I think both are.
We've been trying to contain Iran for 47 years. It's been a major exporter of terror and instability right across the region.
It needs defeating once and for all and, now it's started, I think we must be influencing those decisions.
Ref 29% + 1 Lab 21% + 3 Con 16% - 2 Green 14% + 1 LD 10% -2
Fieldwork 4th to 6th March
Badenoch working her magic touch.
She's been too gungho, especially given Trump's latest nonsense. Why send an aircraft carrier with all the cost and risk involved? Let him fight his own war.
Nonsense. We should have sent in our carrier right from the start.
We'd have a sunker Carrier and Body Bags returning home now if we had and who would YOU have been blaming.
NOT OUR WAR!
Stay Out!
Our ex pats in the region are exactly that ex-pats , many of them there to slag off our Country , how great they are and how crap the UK is, they made their bed, tough shit. The genuine majority should be helped and supported and it;s up to Gulf States to protect them. We should offer support no more. NON aggressive support.
Holidaymakers should and are being helped and slowly getting out!
Lets remind everyone of one FACT!
One drone has fallen on a soverign UK air base. The most accurate reports suggest it was Russian made, fired by Hezbollah probably from remote Labanon area!
RAF and others are now intercepting drone, you CANNOT stop every drone and Badenoch and Farage cannot be allowed to ghoulishly cheer any drone that falls as some sort of sick excuse for their desperation to go to war!
Every drone that stops another Kuwait City tower from burning is a win - that will be appreciated in the region.
We didn't start the war. But we shouldn't sit on our hands either if we can help prevent damage.
Personally, I'd extend that to hunting down the launch sites within Iran too. But I appreciate that is further than some would go. Happy for that subject to be debated in Parliament.
If Kuwait wants to stop drones being launched at Kuwait, then Kuwait can bomb the launch sites. Likewise UAE, Qatar and Bahrain. We can sell them the hardware.
So, you'd let the shaheed drones slam into civilian infrastructure? Even though we could help stop that?
Noted.
Russian drones are slamming into civilian infrastructure in Ukraine and we’re not attacking Russia. Israeli and US missiles are slamming into civilian infrastructure in Iran and we’re not attacking them. Life is somewhat more complicated than you’re painting it.
We have done what we can to assist Ukraine. We have sent them the DragonFire laser system to shoot down drones. Unlike the US, the UK isn't giving Russia an easy ride for giving up on democracy and committing war crimes on an industrial scale - 300,000 logged incidents and counting.
Ref 29% + 1 Lab 21% + 3 Con 16% - 2 Green 14% + 1 LD 10% -2
Fieldwork 4th to 6th March
Badenoch working her magic touch.
She's been too gungho, especially given Trump's latest nonsense. Why send an aircraft carrier with all the cost and risk involved? Let him fight his own war.
Nonsense. We should have sent in our carrier right from the start.
Why?
We weren't part of the planning, such as objectives, rules of engagement or endgame.
No matter how vile the Iranian regime is, it isn't our war nor in our strategic interrst.
It is in our strategic interest to defeat the Iranian regime - one that has been targetting us and our interests for decades. Pathetically hiding behind others, like Ireland does, is weak, makes us a total irrelevance and undermines our credibility worldwide.
We are about to find out the geopolitical consequences of taking a back seat and putting our fingers in our ears, and it won't be pretty.
We won't be taken seriously again.
LOL. Just meekly following Bibi and Trump’s lead is not going to get us taken seriously.
Nah, we've seen Trumps tweets. He has nothing but contempt for us and our military, not just recently but also in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Yet still our right wingers think we should follow him around like a puppy. It is embarrassing.
You're quite right - that's all this issue is about for you.
Trump's tweets.
Yes, this is the war of Trump's egomania. Nothing more to it than that.
We shouldn't touch it with a shitty stick.
I find it fascinating that whenever I talk about Iran, you talk about Trump.
I'm not the slightest bit interested in the latter, I am in the former.
You need to accept the reality of the situation and stop your rage that you can't bear to ever be seen to be on the same side as him, under any circumstances, stop us from acting in our interests.
If Blair's intervention helps keep Starmer in place I'm all for it .
Blair was right about standing shoulder to shoulder with the US. And, quite frankly, Bush was right about the Axis of Evil too.
We are about to find out the consequences of not doing that, which will play out over years - not just months.
I think you underestimate the opprobrium heaped on Blair for the Iraq war. It ruinined him as a politician and completely destroyed his legacy and that war was far more justified than this one. He moved heaven and earth to try to make it legitimate.
I went to the Edinburgh Festival a couple of years ago and Alastair Campbell's daughter was doing a one woman show. In it she talked about her childhood and in passing mentioned how awful it was growing up with a crowd outside your house every morning holding plackards saying "Baby Killers"
If Blair's intervention helps keep Starmer in place I'm all for it .
Blair was right about standing shoulder to shoulder with the US. And, quite frankly, Bush was right about the Axis of Evil too.
We are about to find out the consequences of not doing that, which will play out over years - not just months.
I think you underestimate the opprobrium heaped on Blair for the Iraq war. It ruinined him as a politician and completely destroyed his legacy and that war was far more justified than this one. He moved heaven and earth to try to make it legitimate.
I went to the Edinburgh Festival a couple of years ago and Alastair Campbell's daughter was doing a one woman show. In it she talked about her childhood and in passing mentioned how awful it was growing up with a crowd outside your house every morning holding plackards saying "Baby Killers"
That's despicable behavior and reflects very poorly on that crowd, not Grace Campbell.
Morning, P.B. Quite a lot of adverse reaction from anti-regime Iranians to last night's news.
Netanyahu risks taking moral defeat from the jaws of victory again.
Netanyahu doesn’t give a shit, I suspect
The IDF are already saying they will kill any successor to the Supreme leader. Even those taking part in the appointment. I’m sure their apologists will say this is fine.
Ref 29% + 1 Lab 21% + 3 Con 16% - 2 Green 14% + 1 LD 10% -2
Fieldwork 4th to 6th March
Badenoch working her magic touch.
She's been too gungho, especially given Trump's latest nonsense. Why send an aircraft carrier with all the cost and risk involved? Let him fight his own war.
Nonsense. We should have sent in our carrier right from the start.
We'd have a sunker Carrier and Body Bags returning home now if we had and who would YOU have been blaming.
NOT OUR WAR!
Stay Out!
Our ex pats in the region are exactly that ex-pats , many of them there to slag off our Country , how great they are and how crap the UK is, they made their bed, tough shit. The genuine majority should be helped and supported and it;s up to Gulf States to protect them. We should offer support no more. NON aggressive support.
Holidaymakers should and are being helped and slowly getting out!
Lets remind everyone of one FACT!
One drone has fallen on a soverign UK air base. The most accurate reports suggest it was Russian made, fired by Hezbollah probably from remote Labanon area!
RAF and others are now intercepting drone, you CANNOT stop every drone and Badenoch and Farage cannot be allowed to ghoulishly cheer any drone that falls as some sort of sick excuse for their desperation to go to war!
Every drone that stops another Kuwait City tower from burning is a win - that will be appreciated in the region.
We didn't start the war. But we shouldn't sit on our hands either if we can help prevent damage.
Personally, I'd extend that to hunting down the launch sites within Iran too. But I appreciate that is further than some would go. Happy for that subject to be debated in Parliament.
If Kuwait wants to stop drones being launched at Kuwait, then Kuwait can bomb the launch sites. Likewise UAE, Qatar and Bahrain. We can sell them the hardware.
So, you'd let the shaheed drones slam into civilian infrastructure? Even though we could help stop that?
Noted.
Russian drones are slamming into civilian infrastructure in Ukraine and we’re not attacking Russia. Israeli and US missiles are slamming into civilian infrastructure in Iran and we’re not attacking them. Life is somewhat more complicated than you’re painting it.
We have done what we can to assist Ukraine. We have sent them the DragonFire laser system to shoot down drones. Unlike the US, the UK isn't giving Russia an easy ride for giving up on democracy and committing war crimes on an industrial scale - 300,000 logged incidents and counting.
Great. So we can do the same for the Gulf states. We don’t have to start bombing Iran.
If Blair's intervention helps keep Starmer in place I'm all for it .
Blair was right about standing shoulder to shoulder with the US. And, quite frankly, Bush was right about the Axis of Evil too.
We are about to find out the consequences of not doing that, which will play out over years - not just months.
I think you underestimate the opprobrium heaped on Blair for the Iraq war. It ruinined him as a politician and completely destroyed his legacy and that war was far more justified than this one. He moved heaven and earth to try to make it legitimate.
I went to the Edinburgh Festival a couple of years ago and Alastair Campbell's daughter was doing a one woman show. In it she talked about her childhood and in passing mentioned how awful it was growing up with a crowd outside your house every morning holding plackards saying "Baby Killers"
he won the election in 2005, albeit with a nod and wink to Brown taking over.
Ref 29% + 1 Lab 21% + 3 Con 16% - 2 Green 14% + 1 LD 10% -2
Fieldwork 4th to 6th March
Badenoch working her magic touch.
She's been too gungho, especially given Trump's latest nonsense. Why send an aircraft carrier with all the cost and risk involved? Let him fight his own war.
Nonsense. We should have sent in our carrier right from the start.
Why?
We weren't part of the planning, such as objectives, rules of engagement or endgame.
No matter how vile the Iranian regime is, it isn't our war nor in our strategic interrst.
It is in our strategic interest to defeat the Iranian regime - one that has been targetting us and our interests for decades. Pathetically hiding behind others, like Ireland does, is weak, makes us a total irrelevance and undermines our credibility worldwide.
We are about to find out the geopolitical consequences of taking a back seat and putting our fingers in our ears, and it won't be pretty.
We won't be taken seriously again.
LOL. Just meekly following Bibi and Trump’s lead is not going to get us taken seriously.
Who said we were meek?
Meek is cowardly hiding behind inaction and inactivity until it's all over.
It's far better to be inside the tent and influencing decisions. And, yes, the US and Israel can be influenced.
In what way do you think we should be influencing them? What do you think we should be getting them to do?
For me the issue is more about Starmer's flip flopping. He clearly has never liked Trump, fair enough but he's spent a year up his arse and suddenly he's now trying to placate the left. He's out of his depth and everyone knows it. Worst of all worlds fir the UK
"Israel's military has issued a warning to Iran that it will continue pursuing every successor of the country's deceased supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei."
Trump wants to appoint him, then Israel will try to kill him.
Ref 29% + 1 Lab 21% + 3 Con 16% - 2 Green 14% + 1 LD 10% -2
Fieldwork 4th to 6th March
Badenoch working her magic touch.
She's been too gungho, especially given Trump's latest nonsense. Why send an aircraft carrier with all the cost and risk involved? Let him fight his own war.
We shouldn’t. That’s why we have Akrotiri, so we don’t need a carrier in the Med or Near East
Ref 29% + 1 Lab 21% + 3 Con 16% - 2 Green 14% + 1 LD 10% -2
Fieldwork 4th to 6th March
Badenoch working her magic touch.
She's been too gungho, especially given Trump's latest nonsense. Why send an aircraft carrier with all the cost and risk involved? Let him fight his own war.
Nonsense. We should have sent in our carrier right from the start.
Why?
We weren't part of the planning, such as objectives, rules of engagement or endgame.
No matter how vile the Iranian regime is, it isn't our war nor in our strategic interrst.
It is in our strategic interest to defeat the Iranian regime - one that has been targetting us and our interests for decades. Pathetically hiding behind others, like Ireland does, is weak, makes us a total irrelevance and undermines our credibility worldwide.
We are about to find out the geopolitical consequences of taking a back seat and putting our fingers in our ears, and it won't be pretty.
We won't be taken seriously again.
Ukraine should be the Western priority right now, and the war of choice that the US has launched on Iran has led to more Patriot interceptors being used in a week than have been supplied to Ukraine over four years. At the same time Russian oil sales to India and China have soared with a massively boosted oil price.
This war on Iran is a massive gift to Russia. It harms British interests.
If Ukraine had been helped to win against Russia already then the calculus would be different, but as it is this war is massively self-harming.
And if China identifies US weakness as a result of this war and moves to take Taiwan then this war will be seen as an even more catastrophic unforced error.
Agreed. Casino's "I'm the realist here" stance is highly unconvincing.
Our capacity to aid Ukraine is significant; our capacity to make more than a symbolic gesture even towards air defence in the gulf is minimal. The carriers don't have AEW or escorts, and the F35s are unsuited to anti drone missions.
Ref 29% + 1 Lab 21% + 3 Con 16% - 2 Green 14% + 1 LD 10% -2
Fieldwork 4th to 6th March
Badenoch working her magic touch.
She's been too gungho, especially given Trump's latest nonsense. Why send an aircraft carrier with all the cost and risk involved? Let him fight his own war.
Nonsense. We should have sent in our carrier right from the start.
Why?
We weren't part of the planning, such as objectives, rules of engagement or endgame.
No matter how vile the Iranian regime is, it isn't our war nor in our strategic interrst.
It is in our strategic interest to defeat the Iranian regime - one that has been targetting us and our interests for decades. Pathetically hiding behind others, like Ireland does, is weak, makes us a total irrelevance and undermines our credibility worldwide.
We are about to find out the geopolitical consequences of taking a back seat and putting our fingers in our ears, and it won't be pretty.
We won't be taken seriously again.
LOL. Just meekly following Bibi and Trump’s lead is not going to get us taken seriously.
Nah, we've seen Trumps tweets. He has nothing but contempt for us and our military, not just recently but also in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Yet still our right wingers think we should follow him around like a puppy. It is embarrassing.
You're quite right - that's all this issue is about for you.
Trump's tweets.
Yes, this is the war of Trump's egomania. Nothing more to it than that.
We shouldn't touch it with a shitty stick.
I find it fascinating that whenever I talk about Iran, you talk about Trump.
I'm not the slightest bit interested in the latter, I am in the former.
You need to accept the reality of the situation and stop your rage that you can't bear to ever be seen to be on the same side as him, under any circumstances, stop us from acting in our interests.
You just talked about influencing the US as a reason for getting involved. Who do you imagine is president ?
We've had a 2.5 party system for some time, with the .5 comprising the LDs (when they have more than a handful of seats) and regional parties, but the big two have stubbornly maintained position.
Will things return to normality again? Possibly, but i think even if Labour and the Tories do get back to the top 2, the combined share will be histirically low at the next GE.
"Israel's military has issued a warning to Iran that it will continue pursuing every successor of the country's deceased supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei."
Trump wants to appoint him, then Israel will try to kill him.
Chances that Israel wants any kind of successful, organised Iran, democratic or otherwise, between zero and fuck all.
Ref 29% + 1 Lab 21% + 3 Con 16% - 2 Green 14% + 1 LD 10% -2
Fieldwork 4th to 6th March
Badenoch working her magic touch.
She's been too gungho, especially given Trump's latest nonsense. Why send an aircraft carrier with all the cost and risk involved? Let him fight his own war.
Nonsense. We should have sent in our carrier right from the start.
We'd have a sunker Carrier and Body Bags returning home now if we had and who would YOU have been blaming.
NOT OUR WAR!
Stay Out!
Our ex pats in the region are exactly that ex-pats , many of them there to slag off our Country , how great they are and how crap the UK is, they made their bed, tough shit. The genuine majority should be helped and supported and it;s up to Gulf States to protect them. We should offer support no more. NON aggressive support.
Holidaymakers should and are being helped and slowly getting out!
Lets remind everyone of one FACT!
One drone has fallen on a soverign UK air base. The most accurate reports suggest it was Russian made, fired by Hezbollah probably from remote Labanon area!
RAF and others are now intercepting drone, you CANNOT stop every drone and Badenoch and Farage cannot be allowed to ghoulishly cheer any drone that falls as some sort of sick excuse for their desperation to go to war!
Every drone that stops another Kuwait City tower from burning is a win - that will be appreciated in the region.
We didn't start the war. But we shouldn't sit on our hands either if we can help prevent damage.
Personally, I'd extend that to hunting down the launch sites within Iran too. But I appreciate that is further than some would go. Happy for that subject to be debated in Parliament.
If Kuwait wants to stop drones being launched at Kuwait, then Kuwait can bomb the launch sites. Likewise UAE, Qatar and Bahrain. We can sell them the hardware.
So, you'd let the shaheed drones slam into civilian infrastructure? Even though we could help stop that?
Noted.
It's not about the geopolitics or our wider security interests though, for these people. Still less those of others.
It's all about how Trump has made them feel with his tweets, and how that looks with their social circle.
It's about a completely pointless war that had no chance of improving anything least of all the lives of Iranians
"Israel's military has issued a warning to Iran that it will continue pursuing every successor of the country's deceased supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei."
Trump wants to appoint him, then Israel will try to kill him.
Bout time we called out the Israelis for the war criminals they are now.
I don't usually go in for conspiracy theories but if Blair's intervention wasn't intended as a boost for Starmer what was it? My guess is it'll put at least a couple of points on Starmer's rastings and possibly hold off a leadership challenge which I'd heard was coming in May. Even announcing it was made at a private meeting makes it stronger
If It wasn't a set up it makes no sense. Blair must be the least trusted person on when to go to war and who with in the whole of the UK.
The simplest explanation is twofold:
1 Like many other residents of Dunruling, Blair craves the attention and importance. See Maggie after 1990 for the template.
2 An American war in the Middle East destroyed his premiership, but he's never acknowledged his screwup there. And now he sees his successor (and in most ways, inferior) ignore him and take a different path... That can't be easy.
Blair probably has little day to day input with the work of his institute so is possibly quite bored, believes himself to be an expert on the Middle East, and as you note craves attention.
Ref 29% + 1 Lab 21% + 3 Con 16% - 2 Green 14% + 1 LD 10% -2
Fieldwork 4th to 6th March
Badenoch working her magic touch.
She's been too gungho, especially given Trump's latest nonsense. Why send an aircraft carrier with all the cost and risk involved? Let him fight his own war.
Nonsense. We should have sent in our carrier right from the start.
Why?
We weren't part of the planning, such as objectives, rules of engagement or endgame.
No matter how vile the Iranian regime is, it isn't our war nor in our strategic interrst.
It is in our strategic interest to defeat the Iranian regime - one that has been targetting us and our interests for decades. Pathetically hiding behind others, like Ireland does, is weak, makes us a total irrelevance and undermines our credibility worldwide.
We are about to find out the geopolitical consequences of taking a back seat and putting our fingers in our ears, and it won't be pretty.
We won't be taken seriously again.
Ukraine should be the Western priority right now, and the war of choice that the US has launched on Iran has led to more Patriot interceptors being used in a week than have been supplied to Ukraine over four years. At the same time Russian oil sales to India and China have soared with a massively boosted oil price.
This war on Iran is a massive gift to Russia. It harms British interests.
If Ukraine had been helped to win against Russia already then the calculus would be different, but as it is this war is massively self-harming.
And if China identifies US weakness as a result of this war and moves to take Taiwan then this war will be seen as an even more catastrophic unforced error.
I don't agree. I think both are.
We've been trying to contain Iran for 47 years. It's been a major exporter of terror and instability right across the region.
It needs defeating once and for all and, now it's started, I think we must be influencing those decisions.
I'm not saying Iran is unimportant or ignorable, but Britain and the US decided in WWII that they had to prioritise, and didn't add the USSR to their list of adversaries.
The war on Iran has already helped Russia in its war against Ukraine. It will make the US weaker and less able to defend Taiwan against China.
My fear is it will be seen in the future as a major turning-point in the decline of US power. And the truth is that Britain made itself irrelevant to the decision to go to war due to decades of penny-pinching on defence. Britain is irrelevant due to its weakness, not because it hasn't joined in.
Ref 29% + 1 Lab 21% + 3 Con 16% - 2 Green 14% + 1 LD 10% -2
Fieldwork 4th to 6th March
Badenoch working her magic touch.
She's been too gungho, especially given Trump's latest nonsense. Why send an aircraft carrier with all the cost and risk involved? Let him fight his own war.
Nonsense. We should have sent in our carrier right from the start.
We'd have a sunker Carrier and Body Bags returning home now if we had and who would YOU have been blaming.
NOT OUR WAR!
Stay Out!
Our ex pats in the region are exactly that ex-pats , many of them there to slag off our Country , how great they are and how crap the UK is, they made their bed, tough shit. The genuine majority should be helped and supported and it;s up to Gulf States to protect them. We should offer support no more. NON aggressive support.
Holidaymakers should and are being helped and slowly getting out!
Lets remind everyone of one FACT!
One drone has fallen on a soverign UK air base. The most accurate reports suggest it was Russian made, fired by Hezbollah probably from remote Labanon area!
RAF and others are now intercepting drone, you CANNOT stop every drone and Badenoch and Farage cannot be allowed to ghoulishly cheer any drone that falls as some sort of sick excuse for their desperation to go to war!
Every drone that stops another Kuwait City tower from burning is a win - that will be appreciated in the region.
We didn't start the war. But we shouldn't sit on our hands either if we can help prevent damage.
Personally, I'd extend that to hunting down the launch sites within Iran too. But I appreciate that is further than some would go. Happy for that subject to be debated in Parliament.
If Kuwait wants to stop drones being launched at Kuwait, then Kuwait can bomb the launch sites. Likewise UAE, Qatar and Bahrain. We can sell them the hardware.
So, you'd let the shaheed drones slam into civilian infrastructure? Even though we could help stop that?
Noted.
Russian drones are slamming into civilian infrastructure in Ukraine and we’re not attacking Russia. Israeli and US missiles are slamming into civilian infrastructure in Iran and we’re not attacking them. Life is somewhat more complicated than you’re painting it.
We have done what we can to assist Ukraine. We have sent them the DragonFire laser system to shoot down drones. Unlike the US, the UK isn't giving Russia an easy ride for giving up on democracy and committing war crimes on an industrial scale - 300,000 logged incidents and counting.
Great. So we can do the same for the Gulf states. We don’t have to start bombing Iran.
We have provided Ukraine with StormShadow cruise missiles. That thy use to bomb Russian command and control centres and weapons caches. Within Russia.
Would you not use our StormShadow cruise missiles to bomb known Iranian shaheed drone caches in Iran? Do you not see how inconsistent you appear?
We've had a 2.5 party system for some time, with the .5 comprising the LDs (when they have more than a handful of seats) and regional parties, but the big two have stubbornly maintained position.
Will things return to normality again? Possibly, but i think even if Labour and the Tories do get back to the top 2, the combined share will be histirically low at the next GE.
This is a take on the Lib Dims I think makes some sense
‘ Can't remember who it was said that the best way to understand the Lib Dems is that they are like the fake opposition parties in the Eastern Bloc, who didn’t actually disagree with the regime in any significant way but were allowed to exist to maintain the appearance of pluralism’
It’s only a few weeks since the US was threatening to invade a NATO ally. Get the US to renounce all claims on Greenland before joining them in another war.
"Israel's military has issued a warning to Iran that it will continue pursuing every successor of the country's deceased supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei."
Trump wants to appoint him, then Israel will try to kill him.
Wonder who is in charge then? J D Vance in the background? Behind the sofa?
Ref 29% + 1 Lab 21% + 3 Con 16% - 2 Green 14% + 1 LD 10% -2
Fieldwork 4th to 6th March
Badenoch working her magic touch.
She's been too gungho, especially given Trump's latest nonsense. Why send an aircraft carrier with all the cost and risk involved? Let him fight his own war.
Nonsense. We should have sent in our carrier right from the start.
We'd have a sunker Carrier and Body Bags returning home now if we had and who would YOU have been blaming.
NOT OUR WAR!
Stay Out!
Our ex pats in the region are exactly that ex-pats , many of them there to slag off our Country , how great they are and how crap the UK is, they made their bed, tough shit. The genuine majority should be helped and supported and it;s up to Gulf States to protect them. We should offer support no more. NON aggressive support.
Holidaymakers should and are being helped and slowly getting out!
Lets remind everyone of one FACT!
One drone has fallen on a soverign UK air base. The most accurate reports suggest it was Russian made, fired by Hezbollah probably from remote Labanon area!
RAF and others are now intercepting drone, you CANNOT stop every drone and Badenoch and Farage cannot be allowed to ghoulishly cheer any drone that falls as some sort of sick excuse for their desperation to go to war!
Every drone that stops another Kuwait City tower from burning is a win - that will be appreciated in the region.
We didn't start the war. But we shouldn't sit on our hands either if we can help prevent damage.
Personally, I'd extend that to hunting down the launch sites within Iran too. But I appreciate that is further than some would go. Happy for that subject to be debated in Parliament.
How much value can we really add to the efforts though, realistically? Our contributions often seem tokenistic at best, so the crashout by the White House seems, in typical fashion, excessive.
One of the problems I have with the view taken by the more enthusiastic advocates of military action is that if Iran maintained its regime but just did Trump's bidding he'd be fine with that. The war could end with US approval with a practically identical regime in place.
Another concern is that I have no faith the US military under Trump will shy away from things like bombing water facilities (I did mention a few days ago that Iran's already in very rough shape over water, and this had helped fuel recent protests). That will lead to huge suffering of primarily innocent non-combatants.
We should retaliate against sites/facilities that are attacking our own bases. We should not give a blank cheque to man with the moral standing of Donald Trump.
MD. Regarding your first point, surely that’s just pragmatic foreign policy. You don’t attempt regime change because you disagree with the regime’s treatment of its own people. We’d be at war with Russia, China, half the world, if that was our approach. You do so if your own interests are threatened and there is a high chance of succeeding without suffering unacceptable losses.
Ref 29% + 1 Lab 21% + 3 Con 16% - 2 Green 14% + 1 LD 10% -2
Fieldwork 4th to 6th March
Badenoch working her magic touch.
She's been too gungho, especially given Trump's latest nonsense. Why send an aircraft carrier with all the cost and risk involved? Let him fight his own war.
Nonsense. We should have sent in our carrier right from the start.
Why?
We weren't part of the planning, such as objectives, rules of engagement or endgame.
No matter how vile the Iranian regime is, it isn't our war nor in our strategic interrst.
It is in our strategic interest to defeat the Iranian regime - one that has been targetting us and our interests for decades. Pathetically hiding behind others, like Ireland does, is weak, makes us a total irrelevance and undermines our credibility worldwide.
We are about to find out the geopolitical consequences of taking a back seat and putting our fingers in our ears, and it won't be pretty.
We won't be taken seriously again.
Ukraine should be the Western priority right now, and the war of choice that the US has launched on Iran has led to more Patriot interceptors being used in a week than have been supplied to Ukraine over four years. At the same time Russian oil sales to India and China have soared with a massively boosted oil price.
This war on Iran is a massive gift to Russia. It harms British interests.
If Ukraine had been helped to win against Russia already then the calculus would be different, but as it is this war is massively self-harming.
And if China identifies US weakness as a result of this war and moves to take Taiwan then this war will be seen as an even more catastrophic unforced error.
I don't agree. I think both are.
We've been trying to contain Iran for 47 years. It's been a major exporter of terror and instability right across the region.
It needs defeating once and for all and, now it's started, I think we must be influencing those decisions.
I'm not saying Iran is unimportant or ignorable, but Britain and the US decided in WWII that they had to prioritise, and didn't add the USSR to their list of adversaries.
The war on Iran has already helped Russia in its war against Ukraine. It will make the US weaker and less able to defend Taiwan against China.
My fear is it will be seen in the future as a major turning-point in the decline of US power. And the truth is that Britain made itself irrelevant to the decision to go to war due to decades of penny-pinching on defence. Britain is irrelevant due to its weakness, not because it hasn't joined in.
‘but Britain and the US decided in WWII that they had to prioritise, and didn't add the USSR to their list of adversaries’
Would have been a bit awks as Britain and the USSR were already officially allied before perennial latecomers USA joined the party.
"Israel's military has issued a warning to Iran that it will continue pursuing every successor of the country's deceased supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei."
Trump wants to appoint him, then Israel will try to kill him.
Chances that Israel wants any kind of successful, organised Iran, democratic or otherwise, between zero and fuck all.
They don't want one that is building nukes.
That is a choice down to the Iranians. A country awash with hydrocarbons that "needs civil nuclear power" is just straight-out lying. They want nukes. And having seen how they lash out with drones at all and sundry in the neighbourhood, it gets harder with every passing day to think they wouldn't use those nukes on Israel.
I am not interetsed in giving Israel a pass for their actions against their neighbours. But it is hard to have any sympathy for the Iranian regime getting twatted when that twatting is entirely down to their lifestyle choices.
It’s only a few weeks since the US was threatening to invade a NATO ally. Get the US to renounce all claims on Greenland before joining them in another war.
Quite. I know they'd like to pretend that didn't happen but it did and they were serious about it. Some foot dragging on the next war is definitely in the realm of a proportionate response.
"Israel's military has issued a warning to Iran that it will continue pursuing every successor of the country's deceased supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei."
Trump wants to appoint him, then Israel will try to kill him.
Wonder who is in charge then? J D Vance in the background? Behind the sofa?
"Israel's military has issued a warning to Iran that it will continue pursuing every successor of the country's deceased supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei."
Trump wants to appoint him, then Israel will try to kill him.
The Americans seem happy to be seen as monsters like the Israelis.
Apparently the Venezuelan opposition leader who 'gave Trump her peace prize' and thought she would now be President is a bit miffed the Mad King is leaving the old regime in power
Ref 29% + 1 Lab 21% + 3 Con 16% - 2 Green 14% + 1 LD 10% -2
Fieldwork 4th to 6th March
Badenoch working her magic touch.
She's been too gungho, especially given Trump's latest nonsense. Why send an aircraft carrier with all the cost and risk involved? Let him fight his own war.
Nonsense. We should have sent in our carrier right from the start.
We'd have a sunker Carrier and Body Bags returning home now if we had and who would YOU have been blaming.
NOT OUR WAR!
Stay Out!
Our ex pats in the region are exactly that ex-pats , many of them there to slag off our Country , how great they are and how crap the UK is, they made their bed, tough shit. The genuine majority should be helped and supported and it;s up to Gulf States to protect them. We should offer support no more. NON aggressive support.
Holidaymakers should and are being helped and slowly getting out!
Lets remind everyone of one FACT!
One drone has fallen on a soverign UK air base. The most accurate reports suggest it was Russian made, fired by Hezbollah probably from remote Labanon area!
RAF and others are now intercepting drone, you CANNOT stop every drone and Badenoch and Farage cannot be allowed to ghoulishly cheer any drone that falls as some sort of sick excuse for their desperation to go to war!
Every drone that stops another Kuwait City tower from burning is a win - that will be appreciated in the region.
We didn't start the war. But we shouldn't sit on our hands either if we can help prevent damage.
Personally, I'd extend that to hunting down the launch sites within Iran too. But I appreciate that is further than some would go. Happy for that subject to be debated in Parliament.
If Kuwait wants to stop drones being launched at Kuwait, then Kuwait can bomb the launch sites. Likewise UAE, Qatar and Bahrain. We can sell them the hardware.
So, you'd let the shaheed drones slam into civilian infrastructure? Even though we could help stop that?
Noted.
Russian drones are slamming into civilian infrastructure in Ukraine and we’re not attacking Russia. Israeli and US missiles are slamming into civilian infrastructure in Iran and we’re not attacking them. Life is somewhat more complicated than you’re painting it.
We have done what we can to assist Ukraine. We have sent them the DragonFire laser system to shoot down drones. Unlike the US, the UK isn't giving Russia an easy ride for giving up on democracy and committing war crimes on an industrial scale - 300,000 logged incidents and counting.
Great. So we can do the same for the Gulf states. We don’t have to start bombing Iran.
There's a good argument for involvement in the air defence of the Gulf states, but our current ability to do much more than a token effort isn't great.
The UK itself is deficient in GBAD, but we could send a handful more Typhoons.
Those lacking AESA radar aren't particularly capable.
Ref 29% + 1 Lab 21% + 3 Con 16% - 2 Green 14% + 1 LD 10% -2
Fieldwork 4th to 6th March
Badenoch working her magic touch.
She's been too gungho, especially given Trump's latest nonsense. Why send an aircraft carrier with all the cost and risk involved? Let him fight his own war.
Nonsense. We should have sent in our carrier right from the start.
We'd have a sunker Carrier and Body Bags returning home now if we had and who would YOU have been blaming.
NOT OUR WAR!
Stay Out!
Our ex pats in the region are exactly that ex-pats , many of them there to slag off our Country , how great they are and how crap the UK is, they made their bed, tough shit. The genuine majority should be helped and supported and it;s up to Gulf States to protect them. We should offer support no more. NON aggressive support.
Holidaymakers should and are being helped and slowly getting out!
Lets remind everyone of one FACT!
One drone has fallen on a soverign UK air base. The most accurate reports suggest it was Russian made, fired by Hezbollah probably from remote Labanon area!
RAF and others are now intercepting drone, you CANNOT stop every drone and Badenoch and Farage cannot be allowed to ghoulishly cheer any drone that falls as some sort of sick excuse for their desperation to go to war!
Every drone that stops another Kuwait City tower from burning is a win - that will be appreciated in the region.
We didn't start the war. But we shouldn't sit on our hands either if we can help prevent damage.
Personally, I'd extend that to hunting down the launch sites within Iran too. But I appreciate that is further than some would go. Happy for that subject to be debated in Parliament.
If Kuwait wants to stop drones being launched at Kuwait, then Kuwait can bomb the launch sites. Likewise UAE, Qatar and Bahrain. We can sell them the hardware.
So, you'd let the shaheed drones slam into civilian infrastructure? Even though we could help stop that?
Noted.
Russian drones are slamming into civilian infrastructure in Ukraine and we’re not attacking Russia. Israeli and US missiles are slamming into civilian infrastructure in Iran and we’re not attacking them. Life is somewhat more complicated than you’re painting it.
We have done what we can to assist Ukraine. We have sent them the DragonFire laser system to shoot down drones. Unlike the US, the UK isn't giving Russia an easy ride for giving up on democracy and committing war crimes on an industrial scale - 300,000 logged incidents and counting.
Great. So we can do the same for the Gulf states. We don’t have to start bombing Iran.
We have provided Ukraine with StormShadow cruise missiles. That thy use to bomb Russian command and control centres and weapons caches. Within Russia.
Would you not use our StormShadow cruise missiles to bomb known Iranian shaheed drone caches in Iran? Do you not see how inconsistent you appear?
The UAE already have their own Storm Shadows. They can use them to blow the fuck out of whatever they want. Why is any of this anything to do with the UK?
Ref 29% + 1 Lab 21% + 3 Con 16% - 2 Green 14% + 1 LD 10% -2
Fieldwork 4th to 6th March
Badenoch working her magic touch.
She's been too gungho, especially given Trump's latest nonsense. Why send an aircraft carrier with all the cost and risk involved? Let him fight his own war.
Nonsense. We should have sent in our carrier right from the start.
Why?
We weren't part of the planning, such as objectives, rules of engagement or endgame.
No matter how vile the Iranian regime is, it isn't our war nor in our strategic interrst.
It is in our strategic interest to defeat the Iranian regime - one that has been targetting us and our interests for decades. Pathetically hiding behind others, like Ireland does, is weak, makes us a total irrelevance and undermines our credibility worldwide.
We are about to find out the geopolitical consequences of taking a back seat and putting our fingers in our ears, and it won't be pretty.
We won't be taken seriously again.
LOL. Just meekly following Bibi and Trump’s lead is not going to get us taken seriously.
Nah, we've seen Trumps tweets. He has nothing but contempt for us and our military, not just recently but also in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Yet still our right wingers think we should follow him around like a puppy. It is embarrassing.
You're quite right - that's all this issue is about for you.
Trump's tweets.
Yes, this is the war of Trump's egomania. Nothing more to it than that.
We shouldn't touch it with a shitty stick.
I find it fascinating that whenever I talk about Iran, you talk about Trump.
I'm not the slightest bit interested in the latter, I am in the former.
You need to accept the reality of the situation and stop your rage that you can't bear to ever be seen to be on the same side as him, under any circumstances, stop us from acting in our interests.
You and Barty both seem to accept the Faustian bargain that Francis Urquhart gives us in the final scene of House of Cards, "If you will the end then you must will the means".
Of course what Urquhart says is a lie. Many people will a change of Prime Minister but you don't have to will blackmail, sabotage and murder to achieve it. I feel the same about Iran. One can will the end of the Iranian regime without willing the muddle, cynicism and cruelty that the US and Israel are employing to achieve it. Urquhart ends House of Cards by saying "It's all for the best" when we know that really it isn't.
One of my favourite books is Sybille Bedford's book about the trial of Bodkin Adams 'The Best We Can Do'. The title refers to a quote from the Judge when talking about the fallibility of human justice. When the Iran War is over, we will need to ask the question whether what came after was really the best we can do. A lot of us think we know the answer and I suspect my guess is the opposite of yours.
Ref 29% + 1 Lab 21% + 3 Con 16% - 2 Green 14% + 1 LD 10% -2
Fieldwork 4th to 6th March
Badenoch working her magic touch.
She's been too gungho, especially given Trump's latest nonsense. Why send an aircraft carrier with all the cost and risk involved? Let him fight his own war.
Nonsense. We should have sent in our carrier right from the start.
Why?
We weren't part of the planning, such as objectives, rules of engagement or endgame.
No matter how vile the Iranian regime is, it isn't our war nor in our strategic interrst.
It is in our strategic interest to defeat the Iranian regime - one that has been targetting us and our interests for decades. Pathetically hiding behind others, like Ireland does, is weak, makes us a total irrelevance and undermines our credibility worldwide.
We are about to find out the geopolitical consequences of taking a back seat and putting our fingers in our ears, and it won't be pretty.
We won't be taken seriously again.
In February 2025 a list of all CIA operatives recruited over the previous 2 years was sent in an unclassified email. It was described as "a disastrous national security development". For a period, the CIA has not functioned as a secret intelligence service because so many staff were compromised. After this contacts and intelligence sharing the UK and US were restricted, especially after Ukrainian intelligence was leaked by US to Russia. Although in public, HMG has downplayed this, the reality is that for critical Opsec reasons, we cannot put out officers and agents at risk because of weak US systems. The intelligence concerning the whereabouts of the Ayatollah seems to have come from satellite and Israeli sources. Therefore the threat made yesterday to cease intelligence sharing with the UK by the American side is projection as well as stupid.
The point is that we should not be placing the lives of our service people into the hands of a US administration where strategic and tactical intelligence is an absolute shambles. I of course do not support the Mullahs, but the current "strategy" in Washington is not only a short run risk to the global commodity and financial markets, but actually risks defeat, so badly planned as it has been. Responding to Trump's childish "Starmer is too late" comment is ridiculous. The straits of Hormuz are closed, Dubai is receiving significant damage, not withstanding American missile defence. The fact is that even if a bare 5% of drones get through, Iran has so many cheap drones that the number of very expensive missiles will not be enough to keep the percentage low forever- the US and its allies will run out of missiles before Iran runs out of drones. No wonder the Gulf States are considering their options, with the possibility of dumping US financial assets as a means to pressure the US growing stronger by the day. Those on this site who demand an immediate British participation in this war for reasons of morality, because the Mullahs are self evidently "evil", are being spectacularly naive. There is no ground force, and the resources to create one are simply not there. Iran is not Iraq, and the cost of occupation will be a multiple of the Saddam war. Saddam was "evil" too, but the 1991 Gulf war did not lead to his fall- even though the majority of the Iraqi population loathed the dictator. We cannot expect the Mullahs to fall unless they are removed- and this is a regime quite prepared to kill tens of thousands in order to stay in power.
Trump can hope and pray that the regime falls to an internal insurrection, but what if it doesn't? he has no strategy other than "regime change", he has no tactic other than collaboration with Netanyahu and possibly a hope that this is indeed the "End Times"- neither of which are good military doctrine. A chaotic plan, incompetently executed and with insufficient resources is a recipe for humiliation, not victory.
Ref 29% + 1 Lab 21% + 3 Con 16% - 2 Green 14% + 1 LD 10% -2
Fieldwork 4th to 6th March
Badenoch working her magic touch.
She's been too gungho, especially given Trump's latest nonsense. Why send an aircraft carrier with all the cost and risk involved? Let him fight his own war.
Nonsense. We should have sent in our carrier right from the start.
Why?
We weren't part of the planning, such as objectives, rules of engagement or endgame.
No matter how vile the Iranian regime is, it isn't our war nor in our strategic interrst.
It is in our strategic interest to defeat the Iranian regime - one that has been targetting us and our interests for decades. Pathetically hiding behind others, like Ireland does, is weak, makes us a total irrelevance and undermines our credibility worldwide.
We are about to find out the geopolitical consequences of taking a back seat and putting our fingers in our ears, and it won't be pretty.
We won't be taken seriously again.
Remind me how America viewed us after we didn’t support them in the Vietnam war?
Ref 29% + 1 Lab 21% + 3 Con 16% - 2 Green 14% + 1 LD 10% -2
Fieldwork 4th to 6th March
Badenoch working her magic touch.
She's been too gungho, especially given Trump's latest nonsense. Why send an aircraft carrier with all the cost and risk involved? Let him fight his own war.
Nonsense. We should have sent in our carrier right from the start.
Why?
We weren't part of the planning, such as objectives, rules of engagement or endgame.
No matter how vile the Iranian regime is, it isn't our war nor in our strategic interrst.
It is in our strategic interest to defeat the Iranian regime - one that has been targetting us and our interests for decades. Pathetically hiding behind others, like Ireland does, is weak, makes us a total irrelevance and undermines our credibility worldwide.
We are about to find out the geopolitical consequences of taking a back seat and putting our fingers in our ears, and it won't be pretty.
We won't be taken seriously again.
Ukraine should be the Western priority right now, and the war of choice that the US has launched on Iran has led to more Patriot interceptors being used in a week than have been supplied to Ukraine over four years. At the same time Russian oil sales to India and China have soared with a massively boosted oil price.
This war on Iran is a massive gift to Russia. It harms British interests.
If Ukraine had been helped to win against Russia already then the calculus would be different, but as it is this war is massively self-harming.
And if China identifies US weakness as a result of this war and moves to take Taiwan then this war will be seen as an even more catastrophic unforced error.
I don't agree. I think both are.
We've been trying to contain Iran for 47 years. It's been a major exporter of terror and instability right across the region.
It needs defeating once and for all and, now it's started, I think we must be influencing those decisions.
I'm not saying Iran is unimportant or ignorable, but Britain and the US decided in WWII that they had to prioritise, and didn't add the USSR to their list of adversaries.
The war on Iran has already helped Russia in its war against Ukraine. It will make the US weaker and less able to defend Taiwan against China.
My fear is it will be seen in the future as a major turning-point in the decline of US power. And the truth is that Britain made itself irrelevant to the decision to go to war due to decades of penny-pinching on defence. Britain is irrelevant due to its weakness, not because it hasn't joined in.
‘but Britain and the US decided in WWII that they had to prioritise, and didn't add the USSR to their list of adversaries’
Would have been a bit awks as Britain and the USSR were already officially allied before perennial latecomers USA joined the party.
In early1940 we were planning to send aid to Finland to fight off Stalin, indeed that was part of the reason for the Narvik campaign. At that point it really did look as if we would be fighting both Hitler and Stalin at the same time, as a result of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact.
I don't usually go in for conspiracy theories but if Blair's intervention wasn't intended as a boost for Starmer what was it? My guess is it'll put at least a couple of points on Starmer's rastings and possibly hold off a leadership challenge which I'd heard was coming in May. Even announcing it was made at a private meeting makes it stronger
If It wasn't a set up it makes no sense. Blair must be the least trusted person on when to go to war and who with in the whole of the UK.
The simplest explanation is twofold:
1 Like many other residents of Dunruling, Blair craves the attention and importance. See Maggie after 1990 for the template.
2 An American war in the Middle East destroyed his premiership, but he's never acknowledged his screwup there. And now he sees his successor (and in most ways, inferior) ignore him and take a different path... That can't be easy.
3 He was talking to a paying American audience in private and didn’t expect the remarks to be leaked
Ref 29% + 1 Lab 21% + 3 Con 16% - 2 Green 14% + 1 LD 10% -2
Fieldwork 4th to 6th March
Badenoch working her magic touch.
She's been too gungho, especially given Trump's latest nonsense. Why send an aircraft carrier with all the cost and risk involved? Let him fight his own war.
Nonsense. We should have sent in our carrier right from the start.
We'd have a sunker Carrier and Body Bags returning home now if we had and who would YOU have been blaming.
NOT OUR WAR!
Stay Out!
Our ex pats in the region are exactly that ex-pats , many of them there to slag off our Country , how great they are and how crap the UK is, they made their bed, tough shit. The genuine majority should be helped and supported and it;s up to Gulf States to protect them. We should offer support no more. NON aggressive support.
Holidaymakers should and are being helped and slowly getting out!
Lets remind everyone of one FACT!
One drone has fallen on a soverign UK air base. The most accurate reports suggest it was Russian made, fired by Hezbollah probably from remote Labanon area!
RAF and others are now intercepting drone, you CANNOT stop every drone and Badenoch and Farage cannot be allowed to ghoulishly cheer any drone that falls as some sort of sick excuse for their desperation to go to war!
Every drone that stops another Kuwait City tower from burning is a win - that will be appreciated in the region.
We didn't start the war. But we shouldn't sit on our hands either if we can help prevent damage.
Personally, I'd extend that to hunting down the launch sites within Iran too. But I appreciate that is further than some would go. Happy for that subject to be debated in Parliament.
If Kuwait wants to stop drones being launched at Kuwait, then Kuwait can bomb the launch sites. Likewise UAE, Qatar and Bahrain. We can sell them the hardware.
So, you'd let the shaheed drones slam into civilian infrastructure? Even though we could help stop that?
Noted.
Russian drones are slamming into civilian infrastructure in Ukraine and we’re not attacking Russia. Israeli and US missiles are slamming into civilian infrastructure in Iran and we’re not attacking them. Life is somewhat more complicated than you’re painting it.
We have done what we can to assist Ukraine. We have sent them the DragonFire laser system to shoot down drones. Unlike the US, the UK isn't giving Russia an easy ride for giving up on democracy and committing war crimes on an industrial scale - 300,000 logged incidents and counting.
Great. So we can do the same for the Gulf states. We don’t have to start bombing Iran.
We have provided Ukraine with StormShadow cruise missiles. That thy use to bomb Russian command and control centres and weapons caches. Within Russia.
Would you not use our StormShadow cruise missiles to bomb known Iranian shaheed drone caches in Iran? Do you not see how inconsistent you appear?
The UAE already have their own Storm Shadows. They can use them to blow the fuck out of whatever they want. Why is any of this anything to do with the UK?
The air defence of the gulf states is; they are lucrative arms customers, and some are allies.
That's as far as it goes, though.
Whoever is suggesting we get involved in bombing Iran is indulging in fantasy.
Ref 29% + 1 Lab 21% + 3 Con 16% - 2 Green 14% + 1 LD 10% -2
Fieldwork 4th to 6th March
Badenoch working her magic touch.
She's been too gungho, especially given Trump's latest nonsense. Why send an aircraft carrier with all the cost and risk involved? Let him fight his own war.
Nonsense. We should have sent in our carrier right from the start.
We'd have a sunker Carrier and Body Bags returning home now if we had and who would YOU have been blaming.
NOT OUR WAR!
Stay Out!
Our ex pats in the region are exactly that ex-pats , many of them there to slag off our Country , how great they are and how crap the UK is, they made their bed, tough shit. The genuine majority should be helped and supported and it;s up to Gulf States to protect them. We should offer support no more. NON aggressive support.
Holidaymakers should and are being helped and slowly getting out!
Lets remind everyone of one FACT!
One drone has fallen on a soverign UK air base. The most accurate reports suggest it was Russian made, fired by Hezbollah probably from remote Labanon area!
RAF and others are now intercepting drone, you CANNOT stop every drone and Badenoch and Farage cannot be allowed to ghoulishly cheer any drone that falls as some sort of sick excuse for their desperation to go to war!
Every drone that stops another Kuwait City tower from burning is a win - that will be appreciated in the region.
We didn't start the war. But we shouldn't sit on our hands either if we can help prevent damage.
Personally, I'd extend that to hunting down the launch sites within Iran too. But I appreciate that is further than some would go. Happy for that subject to be debated in Parliament.
If Kuwait wants to stop drones being launched at Kuwait, then Kuwait can bomb the launch sites. Likewise UAE, Qatar and Bahrain. We can sell them the hardware.
So, you'd let the shaheed drones slam into civilian infrastructure? Even though we could help stop that?
Noted.
Russian drones are slamming into civilian infrastructure in Ukraine and we’re not attacking Russia. Israeli and US missiles are slamming into civilian infrastructure in Iran and we’re not attacking them. Life is somewhat more complicated than you’re painting it.
We have done what we can to assist Ukraine. We have sent them the DragonFire laser system to shoot down drones. Unlike the US, the UK isn't giving Russia an easy ride for giving up on democracy and committing war crimes on an industrial scale - 300,000 logged incidents and counting.
Great. So we can do the same for the Gulf states. We don’t have to start bombing Iran.
We have provided Ukraine with StormShadow cruise missiles. That thy use to bomb Russian command and control centres and weapons caches. Within Russia.
Would you not use our StormShadow cruise missiles to bomb known Iranian shaheed drone caches in Iran? Do you not see how inconsistent you appear?
The UAE already have their own Storm Shadows. They can use them to blow the fuck out of whatever they want. Why is any of this anything to do with the UK?
Meek is cowardly hiding behind inaction and inactivity until it's all over.
It's far better to be inside the tent and influencing decisions. And, yes, the US and Israel can be influenced.
The only people who have any influence over Trump are fellow autocrats who he admires, and people willing to give him huge bribes. I see absolutely no evidence that Trump is influenced by the opionions of western democractic governments making reasoned arguments. In fact he seems to take any opposition from such parties as an offence against him personally.
We just need to face facts. The special relationship is over. We can't trust Trump and the US. The US is no longer an ally by any meaningful defenition of the word.
Isreal wants a failed state and couldn’t care less if there’s a civil war in Iran .
And if there’s a refugee crisis which spills into Europe the same right wing Trump lapdogs like Farage who supported the war will then use the refugee crisis to hammer the government.
Apparently the Venezuelan opposition leader who 'gave Trump her peace prize' and thought she would now be President is a bit miffed the Mad King is leaving the old regime in power
Ref 29% + 1 Lab 21% + 3 Con 16% - 2 Green 14% + 1 LD 10% -2
Fieldwork 4th to 6th March
Badenoch working her magic touch.
She's been too gungho, especially given Trump's latest nonsense. Why send an aircraft carrier with all the cost and risk involved? Let him fight his own war.
Nonsense. We should have sent in our carrier right from the start.
Why?
We weren't part of the planning, such as objectives, rules of engagement or endgame.
No matter how vile the Iranian regime is, it isn't our war nor in our strategic interrst.
It is in our strategic interest to defeat the Iranian regime - one that has been targetting us and our interests for decades. Pathetically hiding behind others, like Ireland does, is weak, makes us a total irrelevance and undermines our credibility worldwide.
We are about to find out the geopolitical consequences of taking a back seat and putting our fingers in our ears, and it won't be pretty.
We won't be taken seriously again.
LOL. Just meekly following Bibi and Trump’s lead is not going to get us taken seriously.
Who said we were meek?
Meek is cowardly hiding behind inaction and inactivity until it's all over.
It's far better to be inside the tent and influencing decisions. And, yes, the US and Israel can be influenced.
In what way do you think we should be influencing them? What do you think we should be getting them to do?
Imfluencing them is sometimes a valud strategy, but clearly not with an administration that is openly contemptuous of allies and sees them as subjects.
It's not simply a matter of Trump's personality, it's how the diplomatic game is played - allies can have disagreements behind the scenes or even some spats in public, but openly and proudly treat other countries and leaders like shit and there should be consequences, there should be changes in approach.
Maybe people disagree with the extent of how much the US is no longer a reliable ally, fine, but if they see no negative impact from being undiplomatic then diplomacy is pointless. And that means aiding them less is justified.
Isreal wants a failed state and couldn’t care less if there’s a civil war in Iran .
And if there’s a refugee crisis which spills into Europe the same right wing Trump lapdogs like Farage who supported the war will then use the refugee crisis to hammer the government.
If/when this is a humanitarian crisis, it won't be West Palm Beach where the refugees turn up.
"Israel's military has issued a warning to Iran that it will continue pursuing every successor of the country's deceased supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei."
Trump wants to appoint him, then Israel will try to kill him.
Ref 29% + 1 Lab 21% + 3 Con 16% - 2 Green 14% + 1 LD 10% -2
Fieldwork 4th to 6th March
Badenoch working her magic touch.
She's been too gungho, especially given Trump's latest nonsense. Why send an aircraft carrier with all the cost and risk involved? Let him fight his own war.
Nonsense. We should have sent in our carrier right from the start.
We'd have a sunker Carrier and Body Bags returning home now if we had and who would YOU have been blaming.
NOT OUR WAR!
Stay Out!
Our ex pats in the region are exactly that ex-pats , many of them there to slag off our Country , how great they are and how crap the UK is, they made their bed, tough shit. The genuine majority should be helped and supported and it;s up to Gulf States to protect them. We should offer support no more. NON aggressive support.
Holidaymakers should and are being helped and slowly getting out!
Lets remind everyone of one FACT!
One drone has fallen on a soverign UK air base. The most accurate reports suggest it was Russian made, fired by Hezbollah probably from remote Labanon area!
RAF and others are now intercepting drone, you CANNOT stop every drone and Badenoch and Farage cannot be allowed to ghoulishly cheer any drone that falls as some sort of sick excuse for their desperation to go to war!
Every drone that stops another Kuwait City tower from burning is a win - that will be appreciated in the region.
We didn't start the war. But we shouldn't sit on our hands either if we can help prevent damage.
Personally, I'd extend that to hunting down the launch sites within Iran too. But I appreciate that is further than some would go. Happy for that subject to be debated in Parliament.
How much value can we really add to the efforts though, realistically? Our contributions often seem tokenistic at best, so the crashout by the White House seems, in typical fashion, excessive.
We aren't adding anything to the efforts of the Americans and the Israelis though. We are adding to the efforts to protect our friends (and commercial partners) in the Gulf Cooperation Council. It is in our long-term interests for them to see we stand with them, to do what we can to help them reduce the damage to their countries.
We clearly have very little control over the US and Israeli war aims. We can - admittedly in a limited way - provide some cover to assist the destruction being inflicted upon the GCC by a veangeful and frankly demented Iranian "regime" - to the extent that still functions as such. Our efforts will be appreciated in Dubai and Muscat and Dohar, even though we get no thanks (or worse, actively ridiculed) in Washington and Tel Aviv.
You can still think "Fuck Israel. Fuck the USA." whilst doing what we can to help the consequences on the tens of thousands of Brits in the region under threat as ex-pats or as holidaymakers.
Meek is cowardly hiding behind inaction and inactivity until it's all over.
It's far better to be inside the tent and influencing decisions. And, yes, the US and Israel can be influenced.
The only people who have any influence over Trump are fellow autocrats who he admires, and people willing to give him huge bribes. I see absolutely no evidence that Trump is influenced by the opionions of western democractic governments making reasoned arguments. In fact he seems to take any opposition from such parties as an offence against him personally.
We just need to face facts. The special relationship is over. We can't trust Trump and the US. The US is no longer an ally by any meaningful defenition of the word.
Quite. When has kowtowing to Trump aided our interests? If it did, it would be worth doing, but i'm not seeing how it is.
Being in the tent isn't an advantage if we're just holding the piss jar and still catching part of the spray.
Ref 29% + 1 Lab 21% + 3 Con 16% - 2 Green 14% + 1 LD 10% -2
Fieldwork 4th to 6th March
Badenoch working her magic touch.
She's been too gungho, especially given Trump's latest nonsense. Why send an aircraft carrier with all the cost and risk involved? Let him fight his own war.
Nonsense. We should have sent in our carrier right from the start.
Why?
We weren't part of the planning, such as objectives, rules of engagement or endgame.
No matter how vile the Iranian regime is, it isn't our war nor in our strategic interrst.
It is in our strategic interest to defeat the Iranian regime - one that has been targetting us and our interests for decades. Pathetically hiding behind others, like Ireland does, is weak, makes us a total irrelevance and undermines our credibility worldwide.
We are about to find out the geopolitical consequences of taking a back seat and putting our fingers in our ears, and it won't be pretty.
We won't be taken seriously again.
Ukraine should be the Western priority right now, and the war of choice that the US has launched on Iran has led to more Patriot interceptors being used in a week than have been supplied to Ukraine over four years. At the same time Russian oil sales to India and China have soared with a massively boosted oil price.
This war on Iran is a massive gift to Russia. It harms British interests.
If Ukraine had been helped to win against Russia already then the calculus would be different, but as it is this war is massively self-harming.
And if China identifies US weakness as a result of this war and moves to take Taiwan then this war will be seen as an even more catastrophic unforced error.
I don't agree. I think both are.
We've been trying to contain Iran for 47 years. It's been a major exporter of terror and instability right across the region.
It needs defeating once and for all and, now it's started, I think we must be influencing those decisions.
I'm not saying Iran is unimportant or ignorable, but Britain and the US decided in WWII that they had to prioritise, and didn't add the USSR to their list of adversaries.
The war on Iran has already helped Russia in its war against Ukraine. It will make the US weaker and less able to defend Taiwan against China.
My fear is it will be seen in the future as a major turning-point in the decline of US power. And the truth is that Britain made itself irrelevant to the decision to go to war due to decades of penny-pinching on defence. Britain is irrelevant due to its weakness, not because it hasn't joined in.
‘but Britain and the US decided in WWII that they had to prioritise, and didn't add the USSR to their list of adversaries’
Would have been a bit awks as Britain and the USSR were already officially allied before perennial latecomers USA joined the party.
In early1940 we were planning to send aid to Finland to fight off Stalin, indeed that was part of the reason for the Narvik campaign. At that point it really did look as if we would be fighting both Hitler and Stalin at the same time, as a result of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact.
And yet 18 months later thanks to AH and fulsome propagandising by HMG, we were snuggling up to Uncle Joe and breathlessly following the battles of our brave, noble allies, the Red Army. A year and a half is an eternity in geopolitics.
Ref 29% + 1 Lab 21% + 3 Con 16% - 2 Green 14% + 1 LD 10% -2
Fieldwork 4th to 6th March
Badenoch working her magic touch.
She's been too gungho, especially given Trump's latest nonsense. Why send an aircraft carrier with all the cost and risk involved? Let him fight his own war.
Nonsense. We should have sent in our carrier right from the start.
We'd have a sunker Carrier and Body Bags returning home now if we had and who would YOU have been blaming.
NOT OUR WAR!
Stay Out!
Our ex pats in the region are exactly that ex-pats , many of them there to slag off our Country , how great they are and how crap the UK is, they made their bed, tough shit. The genuine majority should be helped and supported and it;s up to Gulf States to protect them. We should offer support no more. NON aggressive support.
Holidaymakers should and are being helped and slowly getting out!
Lets remind everyone of one FACT!
One drone has fallen on a soverign UK air base. The most accurate reports suggest it was Russian made, fired by Hezbollah probably from remote Labanon area!
RAF and others are now intercepting drone, you CANNOT stop every drone and Badenoch and Farage cannot be allowed to ghoulishly cheer any drone that falls as some sort of sick excuse for their desperation to go to war!
Every drone that stops another Kuwait City tower from burning is a win - that will be appreciated in the region.
We didn't start the war. But we shouldn't sit on our hands either if we can help prevent damage.
Personally, I'd extend that to hunting down the launch sites within Iran too. But I appreciate that is further than some would go. Happy for that subject to be debated in Parliament.
How much value can we really add to the efforts though, realistically? Our contributions often seem tokenistic at best, so the crashout by the White House seems, in typical fashion, excessive.
We aren't adding anything to the efforts of the Americans and the Israelis though. We are adding to the efforts to protect our friends (and commercial partners) in the Gulf Cooperation Council. It is in our long-term interests for them to see we stand with them, to do what we can to help them reduce the damage to their countries.
We clearly have very little control over the US and Israeli war aims. We can - admittedly in a limited way - provide some cover to assist the destruction being inflicted upon the GCC by a veangeful and frankly demented Iranian "regime" - to the extent that still functions as such. Our efforts will be appreciated in Dubai and Muscat and Dohar, even though we get no thanks (or worse, actively ridiculed) in Washington and Tel Aviv.
You can still think "Fuck Israel. Fuck the USA." whilst doing what we can to help the consequences on the tens of thousands of Brits in the region under threat as ex-pats or as holidaymakers.
"Israel's military has issued a warning to Iran that it will continue pursuing every successor of the country's deceased supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei."
Trump wants to appoint him, then Israel will try to kill him.
Wonder who is in charge then? J D Vance in the background? Behind the sofa?
Vance is staying away from this, as far as he possibly can, so that he still has a platform for 2028 when the Middle East ends up more pear-shaped than it is already.
The difference between UK and US is that in the UK it's the centre and left opposing intervention; in the US a good slice of the right is, as well.
Ref 29% + 1 Lab 21% + 3 Con 16% - 2 Green 14% + 1 LD 10% -2
Fieldwork 4th to 6th March
Badenoch working her magic touch.
She's been too gungho, especially given Trump's latest nonsense. Why send an aircraft carrier with all the cost and risk involved? Let him fight his own war.
Nonsense. We should have sent in our carrier right from the start.
We'd have a sunker Carrier and Body Bags returning home now if we had and who would YOU have been blaming.
NOT OUR WAR!
Stay Out!
Our ex pats in the region are exactly that ex-pats , many of them there to slag off our Country , how great they are and how crap the UK is, they made their bed, tough shit. The genuine majority should be helped and supported and it;s up to Gulf States to protect them. We should offer support no more. NON aggressive support.
Holidaymakers should and are being helped and slowly getting out!
Lets remind everyone of one FACT!
One drone has fallen on a soverign UK air base. The most accurate reports suggest it was Russian made, fired by Hezbollah probably from remote Labanon area!
RAF and others are now intercepting drone, you CANNOT stop every drone and Badenoch and Farage cannot be allowed to ghoulishly cheer any drone that falls as some sort of sick excuse for their desperation to go to war!
Every drone that stops another Kuwait City tower from burning is a win - that will be appreciated in the region.
We didn't start the war. But we shouldn't sit on our hands either if we can help prevent damage.
Personally, I'd extend that to hunting down the launch sites within Iran too. But I appreciate that is further than some would go. Happy for that subject to be debated in Parliament.
How much value can we really add to the efforts though, realistically? Our contributions often seem tokenistic at best, so the crashout by the White House seems, in typical fashion, excessive.
We aren't adding anything to the efforts of the Americans and the Israelis though. We are adding to the efforts to protect our friends (and commercial partners) in the Gulf Cooperation Council. It is in our long-term interests for them to see we stand with them, to do what we can to help them reduce the damage to their countries.
We clearly have very little control over the US and Israeli war aims. We can - admittedly in a limited way - provide some cover to assist the destruction being inflicted upon the GCC by a veangeful and frankly demented Iranian "regime" - to the extent that still functions as such. Our efforts will be appreciated in Dubai and Muscat and Dohar, even though we get no thanks (or worse, actively ridiculed) in Washington and Tel Aviv.
You can still think "Fuck Israel. Fuck the USA." whilst doing what we can to help the consequences on the tens of thousands of Brits in the region under threat as ex-pats or as holidaymakers.
I dont think fuck Israel or fuck the USA. Trying to maintain good relations with Gulf states is a reasonable goal, but on a practical level it still seems there's very little more we can do.
If Starmer had the bottle this would be the perfect time for him to declare this war illegal. Hr could make the case that if the invasion of Ukraine is illegal so is this one. He could call a meeting of the UN and make a name for himself. All significant countries in Europe are against it.
Ref 29% + 1 Lab 21% + 3 Con 16% - 2 Green 14% + 1 LD 10% -2
Fieldwork 4th to 6th March
Badenoch working her magic touch.
She's been too gungho, especially given Trump's latest nonsense. Why send an aircraft carrier with all the cost and risk involved? Let him fight his own war.
Nonsense. We should have sent in our carrier right from the start.
Why?
We weren't part of the planning, such as objectives, rules of engagement or endgame.
No matter how vile the Iranian regime is, it isn't our war nor in our strategic interrst.
It is in our strategic interest to defeat the Iranian regime - one that has been targetting us and our interests for decades. Pathetically hiding behind others, like Ireland does, is weak, makes us a total irrelevance and undermines our credibility worldwide.
We are about to find out the geopolitical consequences of taking a back seat and putting our fingers in our ears, and it won't be pretty.
We won't be taken seriously again.
Ukraine should be the Western priority right now, and the war of choice that the US has launched on Iran has led to more Patriot interceptors being used in a week than have been supplied to Ukraine over four years. At the same time Russian oil sales to India and China have soared with a massively boosted oil price.
This war on Iran is a massive gift to Russia. It harms British interests.
If Ukraine had been helped to win against Russia already then the calculus would be different, but as it is this war is massively self-harming.
And if China identifies US weakness as a result of this war and moves to take Taiwan then this war will be seen as an even more catastrophic unforced error.
I don't agree. I think both are.
We've been trying to contain Iran for 47 years. It's been a major exporter of terror and instability right across the region.
It needs defeating once and for all and, now it's started, I think we must be influencing those decisions.
I'm not saying Iran is unimportant or ignorable, but Britain and the US decided in WWII that they had to prioritise, and didn't add the USSR to their list of adversaries.
The war on Iran has already helped Russia in its war against Ukraine. It will make the US weaker and less able to defend Taiwan against China.
My fear is it will be seen in the future as a major turning-point in the decline of US power. And the truth is that Britain made itself irrelevant to the decision to go to war due to decades of penny-pinching on defence. Britain is irrelevant due to its weakness, not because it hasn't joined in.
‘but Britain and the US decided in WWII that they had to prioritise, and didn't add the USSR to their list of adversaries’
Would have been a bit awks as Britain and the USSR were already officially allied before perennial latecomers USA joined the party.
In early1940 we were planning to send aid to Finland to fight off Stalin, indeed that was part of the reason for the Narvik campaign. At that point it really did look as if we would be fighting both Hitler and Stalin at the same time, as a result of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact.
Hitler was supporting the Finns wasn't he? One of the reasons Finland had to hand over so much territory IIRC.
I don't usually go in for conspiracy theories but if Blair's intervention wasn't intended as a boost for Starmer what was it? My guess is it'll put at least a couple of points on Starmer's rastings and possibly hold off a leadership challenge which I'd heard was coming in May. Even announcing it was made at a private meeting makes it stronger
If It wasn't a set up it makes no sense. Blair must be the least trusted person on when to go to war and who with in the whole of the UK.
The simplest explanation is twofold:
1 Like many other residents of Dunruling, Blair craves the attention and importance. See Maggie after 1990 for the template.
2 An American war in the Middle East destroyed his premiership, but he's never acknowledged his screwup there. And now he sees his successor (and in most ways, inferior) ignore him and take a different path... That can't be easy.
3 He was talking to a paying American audience in private and didn’t expect the remarks to be leaked
Ref 29% + 1 Lab 21% + 3 Con 16% - 2 Green 14% + 1 LD 10% -2
Fieldwork 4th to 6th March
Badenoch working her magic touch.
She's been too gungho, especially given Trump's latest nonsense. Why send an aircraft carrier with all the cost and risk involved? Let him fight his own war.
Nonsense. We should have sent in our carrier right from the start.
We'd have a sunker Carrier and Body Bags returning home now if we had and who would YOU have been blaming.
NOT OUR WAR!
Stay Out!
Our ex pats in the region are exactly that ex-pats , many of them there to slag off our Country , how great they are and how crap the UK is, they made their bed, tough shit. The genuine majority should be helped and supported and it;s up to Gulf States to protect them. We should offer support no more. NON aggressive support.
Holidaymakers should and are being helped and slowly getting out!
Lets remind everyone of one FACT!
One drone has fallen on a soverign UK air base. The most accurate reports suggest it was Russian made, fired by Hezbollah probably from remote Labanon area!
RAF and others are now intercepting drone, you CANNOT stop every drone and Badenoch and Farage cannot be allowed to ghoulishly cheer any drone that falls as some sort of sick excuse for their desperation to go to war!
Every drone that stops another Kuwait City tower from burning is a win - that will be appreciated in the region.
We didn't start the war. But we shouldn't sit on our hands either if we can help prevent damage.
Personally, I'd extend that to hunting down the launch sites within Iran too. But I appreciate that is further than some would go. Happy for that subject to be debated in Parliament.
How much value can we really add to the efforts though, realistically? Our contributions often seem tokenistic at best, so the crashout by the White House seems, in typical fashion, excessive.
We aren't adding anything to the efforts of the Americans and the Israelis though. We are adding to the efforts to protect our friends (and commercial partners) in the Gulf Cooperation Council. It is in our long-term interests for them to see we stand with them, to do what we can to help them reduce the damage to their countries.
We clearly have very little control over the US and Israeli war aims. We can - admittedly in a limited way - provide some cover to assist the destruction being inflicted upon the GCC by a veangeful and frankly demented Iranian "regime" - to the extent that still functions as such. Our efforts will be appreciated in Dubai and Muscat and Dohar, even though we get no thanks (or worse, actively ridiculed) in Washington and Tel Aviv.
You can still think "Fuck Israel. Fuck the USA." whilst doing what we can to help the consequences on the tens of thousands of Brits in the region under threat as ex-pats or as holidaymakers.
If Starmer had the bottle this would be the perfect time for him to declare this war illegal. Hr could make the case that if the invasion of Ukraine is illegal so is this one. He could call a meeting of the UN and make a name for himself. All significant countries in Europe are against it.
I'm not terribly impressed by Luke Tryl's political analysis in general and this effort is misleading.
He makes big play of the Lab/Con split now but that's just polling - if he included polling and not just actual elections he would likely find other periods when the Lab/Con vote was depressed. In 1981-82, there were polls putting the Allance well in front and with Lab/Con combined barely at 50%. In the mid-80s, it was a little higher but we had plenty of polls in that period when Labour, Conservative and Alliance were all around 30% - I think famously there was one three way tie at 31%.
As recently as June 2019, there were polls showing Lab/Con in the high 30s in the period just before Theresa May resigned so this is nothing new.
The key is whether this depressed value will remain the case up to and including the 2029 GE - history shows it won't and it remains to be seen whether Reform and Green are simply feeding on midterm and general disillusionment rather than marking a seismic re-alignment.
Comments
This has nothing to do with bringing democracy to Iran.
Just like Venezuela.
Yet still our right wingers think we should follow him around like a puppy. It is embarrassing.
Why would the UK want to be involved in an illegal war? Some crazed blood lust only satisfied by bombing women and children?
If the concern is about Iranian strikes on the gulf states then the most effective action would be pressure on the US and Israel to stop bombing them.
I appreciate this correlation/causation might be a bit simple for some people but Iran wasn't bombing the gulf states before the US and Israel attacked them.
Noted.
I can't for the life of me understand why Badenoch and Farage aren't crying out for parliament to decide.
Oh hang on
Again, another silly post littered with America and Trump reflecting the obsessions of liberals and Lefties.
Meek is cowardly hiding behind inaction and inactivity until it's all over.
It's far better to be inside the tent and influencing decisions. And, yes, the US and Israel can be influenced.
If you want expertise in anti-shahed warfare speak to the Ukranians. They have the expertise and kit.
As is the rest of your post: have you looked up what the Iranian regime has done over recent weeks, yet alone the last few years or decades?
This war on Iran is a massive gift to Russia. It harms British interests.
If Ukraine had been helped to win against Russia already then the calculus would be different, but as it is this war is massively self-harming.
And if China identifies US weakness as a result of this war and moves to take Taiwan then this war will be seen as an even more catastrophic unforced error.
Trump's tweets.
It's all about how Trump has made them feel with his tweets, and how that looks with their social circle.
Another concern is that I have no faith the US military under Trump will shy away from things like bombing water facilities (I did mention a few days ago that Iran's already in very rough shape over water, and this had helped fuel recent protests). That will lead to huge suffering of primarily innocent non-combatants.
We should retaliate against sites/facilities that are attacking our own bases. We should not give a blank cheque to man with the moral standing of Donald Trump.
We shouldn't touch it with a shitty stick.
But on the latter point, why should we be involved defending anywhere other than UK territory and bases?
If any country has an obligation to defend the region, it is the one that started the war.
Also, if Trump is going to rubbish the UK's previous conyributions, fuck him, we won't bother.
We've been trying to contain Iran for 47 years. It's been a major exporter of terror and instability right across the region.
It needs defeating once and for all and, now it's started, I think we must be influencing those decisions.
I have sufficient bandwitdth to separate out that Trump/Bibi started this conflagration - and we can be good world citizens by mitigating some of the impact of the consequences of that conflagration. We should step up and help protect the Gulf states from the consequences of Iran wildly lashing out at anybody that hosts US bases. Iran in turn killing 160 girls in a Kuwaiti school is something we should do all we can to prevent happening.
EDIT sorry, that's @BartholomewRoberts
I'm not the slightest bit interested in the latter, I am in the former.
You need to accept the reality of the situation and stop your rage that you can't bear to ever be seen to be on the same side as him, under any circumstances, stop us from acting in our interests.
I went to the Edinburgh Festival a couple of years ago and Alastair Campbell's daughter was doing a one woman show. In it she talked about her childhood and in passing mentioned how awful it was growing up with a crowd outside your house every morning holding plackards saying "Baby Killers"
On that, we're agreed.
The IDF are already saying they will kill any successor to the Supreme leader. Even those taking part in the appointment. I’m sure their apologists will say this is fine.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/cz0g2yg3579t
Trump wants to appoint him, then Israel will try to kill him.
Casino's "I'm the realist here" stance is highly unconvincing.
Our capacity to aid Ukraine is significant; our capacity to make more than a symbolic gesture even towards air defence in the gulf is minimal.
The carriers don't have AEW or escorts, and the F35s are unsuited to anti drone missions.
Will things return to normality again? Possibly, but i think even if Labour and the Tories do get back to the top 2, the combined share will be histirically low at the next GE.
The war on Iran has already helped Russia in its war against Ukraine. It will make the US weaker and less able to defend Taiwan against China.
My fear is it will be seen in the future as a major turning-point in the decline of US power. And the truth is that Britain made itself irrelevant to the decision to go to war due to decades of penny-pinching on defence. Britain is irrelevant due to its weakness, not because it hasn't joined in.
Would you not use our StormShadow cruise missiles to bomb known Iranian shaheed drone caches in Iran? Do you not see how inconsistent you appear?
‘ Can't remember who it was said that the best way to understand the Lib Dems is that they are like the fake opposition parties in the Eastern Bloc, who didn’t actually disagree with the regime in any significant way but were allowed to exist to maintain the appearance of pluralism’
https://x.com/cpthastings1916/status/2028537074152849488?s=61
I agree with your other points.
Would have been a bit awks as Britain and the USSR were already officially allied before perennial latecomers USA joined the party.
That is a choice down to the Iranians. A country awash with hydrocarbons that "needs civil nuclear power" is just straight-out lying. They want nukes. And having seen how they lash out with drones at all and sundry in the neighbourhood, it gets harder with every passing day to think they wouldn't use those nukes on Israel.
I am not interetsed in giving Israel a pass for their actions against their neighbours. But it is hard to have any sympathy for the Iranian regime getting twatted when that twatting is entirely down to their lifestyle choices.
‘I’ll let you go on top this time’
https://www.thenationalnews.com/news/gulf/2026/03/06/raf-typhoons-to-provide-air-cover-for-bahrain/
There's a good argument for involvement in the air defence of the Gulf states, but our current ability to do much more than a token effort isn't great.
The UK itself is deficient in GBAD, but we could send a handful more Typhoons.
Those lacking AESA radar aren't particularly capable.
Of course what Urquhart says is a lie. Many people will a change of Prime Minister but you don't have to will blackmail, sabotage and murder to achieve it. I feel the same about Iran. One can will the end of the Iranian regime without willing the muddle, cynicism and cruelty that the US and Israel are employing to achieve it. Urquhart ends House of Cards by saying "It's all for the best" when we know that really it isn't.
One of my favourite books is Sybille Bedford's book about the trial of Bodkin Adams 'The Best We Can Do'. The title refers to a quote from the Judge when talking about the fallibility of human justice. When the Iran War is over, we will need to ask the question whether what came after was really the best we can do. A lot of us think we know the answer and I suspect my guess is the opposite of yours.
The point is that we should not be placing the lives of our service people into the hands of a US administration where strategic and tactical intelligence is an absolute shambles. I of course do not support the Mullahs, but the current "strategy" in Washington is not only a short run risk to the global commodity and financial markets, but actually risks defeat, so badly planned as it has been. Responding to Trump's childish "Starmer is too late" comment is ridiculous. The straits of Hormuz are closed, Dubai is receiving significant damage, not withstanding American missile defence. The fact is that even if a bare 5% of drones get through, Iran has so many cheap drones that the number of very expensive missiles will not be enough to keep the percentage low forever- the US and its allies will run out of missiles before Iran runs out of drones. No wonder the Gulf States are considering their options, with the possibility of dumping US financial assets as a means to pressure the US growing stronger by the day. Those on this site who demand an immediate British participation in this war for reasons of morality, because the Mullahs are self evidently "evil", are being spectacularly naive. There is no ground force, and the resources to create one are simply not there. Iran is not Iraq, and the cost of occupation will be a multiple of the Saddam war. Saddam was "evil" too, but the 1991 Gulf war did not lead to his fall- even though the majority of the Iraqi population loathed the dictator. We cannot expect the Mullahs to fall unless they are removed- and this is a regime quite prepared to kill tens of thousands in order to stay in power.
Trump can hope and pray that the regime falls to an internal insurrection, but what if it doesn't? he has no strategy other than "regime change", he has no tactic other than collaboration with Netanyahu and possibly a hope that this is indeed the "End Times"- neither of which are good military doctrine. A chaotic plan, incompetently executed and with insufficient resources is a recipe for humiliation, not victory.
That's as far as it goes, though.
Whoever is suggesting we get involved in bombing Iran is indulging in fantasy.
We just need to face facts. The special relationship is over. We can't trust Trump and the US. The US is no longer an ally by any meaningful defenition of the word.
And if there’s a refugee crisis which spills into Europe the same right wing Trump lapdogs like Farage who supported the war will then use the refugee crisis to hammer the government.
https://www.aa.com.tr/en/middle-east/polls-show-majority-of-europeans-oppose-us-israeli-strikes-on-iran/3853988
It's not simply a matter of Trump's personality, it's how the diplomatic game is played - allies can have disagreements behind the scenes or even some spats in public, but openly and proudly treat other countries and leaders like shit and there should be consequences, there should be changes in approach.
Maybe people disagree with the extent of how much the US is no longer a reliable ally, fine, but if they see no negative impact from being undiplomatic then diplomacy is pointless. And that means aiding them less is justified.
We clearly have very little control over the US and Israeli war aims. We can - admittedly in a limited way - provide some cover to assist the destruction being inflicted upon the GCC by a veangeful and frankly demented Iranian "regime" - to the extent that still functions as such. Our efforts will be appreciated in Dubai and Muscat and Dohar, even though we get no thanks (or worse, actively ridiculed) in Washington and Tel Aviv.
You can still think "Fuck Israel. Fuck the USA." whilst doing what we can to help the consequences on the tens of thousands of Brits in the region under threat as ex-pats or as holidaymakers.
Being in the tent isn't an advantage if we're just holding the piss jar and still catching part of the spray.
A year and a half is an eternity in geopolitics.
The difference between UK and US is that in the UK it's the centre and left opposing intervention; in the US a good slice of the right is, as well.
Trump tells Starmer help not needed even as US uses UK bases for Iran strikes
Morning all
I'm not terribly impressed by Luke Tryl's political analysis in general and this effort is misleading.
He makes big play of the Lab/Con split now but that's just polling - if he included polling and not just actual elections he would likely find other periods when the Lab/Con vote was depressed. In 1981-82, there were polls putting the Allance well in front and with Lab/Con combined barely at 50%. In the mid-80s, it was a little higher but we had plenty of polls in that period when Labour, Conservative and Alliance were all around 30% - I think famously there was one three way tie at 31%.
As recently as June 2019, there were polls showing Lab/Con in the high 30s in the period just before Theresa May resigned so this is nothing new.
The key is whether this depressed value will remain the case up to and including the 2029 GE - history shows it won't and it remains to be seen whether Reform and Green are simply feeding on midterm and general disillusionment rather than marking a seismic re-alignment.