I rarely give much credit to Sir Keir Starmer, but he was right to stay out of the initial American and Israeli strikes last weekend, not least because Donald Trump doesn’t appear to have a coherent strategy for how this conflict ends.

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It was a big call, but he got it right. However, whether Starmer likes it or not, the UK is now being dragged into this war in other ways - and the PM’s been far too slow to react.

Our military bases in Cyprus and Bahrain have come under attack. More than a hundred thousand British nationals in the Gulf need evacuating.

And already there are warnings that annual UK energy bills could rise by £500 because of the closure of the Strait of Hormuz and fears over the supply of oil and liquified natural gas from the Middle East.

So far, the government has been flat-footed and inept in its response. Why, for instance, was the........

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