The future of a fragile Labour government may well be written some 4000 miles away in the Straits of Hormuz. As the Iran crisis deepens and consumers feel anxiety about the impact on energy and petrol prices, a party leadership that sought to position itself as sceptical of involvement in the conflict finds itself drawn further in as the stakes rise.

The Strait are the world’s most critical oil and liquified natural gas trade route and Iran intends to make them unpassable for cargo. They are already uninsurable. This is the single biggest factor now re-calibrating the international response to the war. Whether or not Donald Trump’s onslaught in Iran was a good idea, the question is what a party and public divided about the consequences does next.

Keir Starmer had wanted to reassure his already unquiet party that he was not simply going to be a passenger on a US-Israeli mission. But he finds himself in a new Catch 22: whichever way he moves, many people in his own ranks will be angry or disappointed.

Ed Miliband, the energy secretary and one of the most sceptical Cabinet voices, is Exhibit A. Yesterday, he appeared on the BBC, citing Starmer’s original decision not to join the attack on Iran as derived from the “lessons of Iraq”. Labour’s thinking on the crisis is overwhelmingly framed through the lens of Iran as potentially “another Iraq”. And that reductive approach sends the message, echoed by the Cabinet, that the more we stay away, the better.

This posture held up across a lot of the Labour party until Iran engaged in a scattergun retaliation across the Gulf. That endangered British allies and demanded a defensive response from a UK military, which, for all its weaknesses, can project........

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