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 Iranian ambassador not summoned to the foreign office until Wednesday, despite RAF Aktoriti being struck by an Iranian-made drone in the early hours of Monday? And why has it taken until Thursday for the first government charter flight to evacuate Brits stranded in the Middle East?

The issue of our bases coming under attack is particularly pertinent. The Labour government’s track record on defending our overseas territories has been woeful, from the surrender of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius to the questionable deal struck by David Lammy with the EU over Gibraltar. Now it’s our military bases that are coming under fire, and the government’s response has been lacklustre to say the least.

In case the PM needs reminding, our two bases in Cyprus - Akrotiri and Dhekelia - remain British sovereign territory under the 1960 treaty which established Cypriot independence from the UK. And yet only now is the Defence Secretary, John Healey, flying in to visit. No wonder the High Commissioner of Cyprus in London, Kyriacos Kouros, says he’s “disappointed” in Britain’s lack of response, adding: “The French are coming. The least we expect is the Britons to also be present since… we are not only defending Cypriots on the islands.”

This raises broader questions about the UK’s preparedness - or lack of it - for a Middle Eastern conflict. The US military has been building-up forces in the region for months, so why didn’t we pre-emptively deploy a Type 45 destroyer to help protect our bases? The HMS Dragon warship is now expected to set sail for the Mediterranean next week, but why has it taken so long?

And then there’s the broader issue of defence spending. The Chancellor delivered her Spring Statement earlier this week, yet notable by its absence was any commitment to increase our military budget further or faster. The Tory leader Kemi Badenoch was right to chastise the Prime Minister yesterday for priorising the benefits bill over our armed forces. Our total annual welfare spend is £333bn, compared to just £61.7bn on defence. That simply has to change.

The British people will be broadly supportive of Starmer’s refusal to join Trump’s war. But even though we’re not participating in offensive strikes, we are involved in this conflict in other ways, and it’s time to start acting like it. The government needs to get real and act quickly - defend our bases, evacuate our fellow citizens, and ramp up defence spending.

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