Here is the sort of analysis you’re being served up by our esteemed commentariat. Keir Starmer’s positioning on the Iran war, we are told, reveals a prime minister with no political compass. True, but talk about burying the lede. The story here is not Starmer’s lack of political acumen. British involvement in the Iran war is not a policy question on which reasonable people might disagree, like raising a tax here or spending a bit more money there. This is a grave crime.

Yet all the pressure on Starmer seems to arrive from one direction. He “should have backed America from the very beginning”, declares Tony Blair, apparently eager for his successor to emulate his own record of dragging Britain into US-led catastrophes widely condemned as illegal. Donald Trump’s sidekick Nigel Farage, Tory leader Kemi Badenoch and the rightwing press make much the same complaint.

These conservative “patriots” urged us to “take back control” from Brussels, but demand Britain acts as Trump’s poodle. That this is not only politically permissible but a respectable mainstream position tells a grim story. Despite having dragged this country into one violent catastrophe after another, our political and media elites appear incapable of learning a single lesson.

Let’s spell out what is happening here. A state committing genocide – Israel – has joined forces with an ailing superpower led by an aspiring autocrat. Together they have launched a plainly illegal war, as defined by the UN charter, which prohibits the use of force unless a state faces an actual or imminent attack.

More than 1,000 civilians have been confirmed killed in Iran, according to Human Rights Activists news agency – almost certainly a severe underestimate. That includes 168 people killed in a strike on a........

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