Blair has handed Starmer the best PR any embattled PM could wish for

Starmer’s judicial caution over the Iran war may have been the result of pressure from within his cabinet, but ultimately it is the prime minister who makes such decisions. He should carry the can for it. And he should enjoy any collateral upside.

Starmer will have understood the consequences; that the Egomaniac-in-Chief would spit the dummy.

Sir Keir is many things – disingenuous, insincere … frequently disappointing. But he’s not entirely thick.

He knew denying this US president – actually, any US president but especially this ogre – would result in a political cold front crossing the Atlantic faster than a B1 bomber.

It would, for Starmer, have been an especially painful decision, having already gambled (and lost) so much on kiss-arsing Trump. Denying him use of our air bases was, as some might say, joining a war (of public opinion) he has already lost.

But the idea – widely promulgated in the front pages and broadcast of our hard right media – that it’s Starmer’s fault that the so-called special relationship is in jeopardy is as crackers as it is cynical.

Put aside whatever you happen to feel, personally, about Blair (and I am, for the record, one who believes the good of his government should long outlive the ill) but it’s a fact that the majority of the public has turned on the man they voted for in three elections.

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Despite a moderate rehabilitation, the most recent YouGov polling ranked Blair our 26th popular PM – way below Theresa May. Below, even, Sir Keir himself, ranked 24th. A majority of people (53%) dislike him.

Most will never forgive Blair for his involvement in Iraq. They consider his willingness to suck up to George W Bush, having been swept along by the personal adulation he received for his stalwart response to 9/11, a low point in modern British history.

As for Trump’s reputation in this country; it couldn’t be lower. He has publicly denigrated our war dead, mocked our armed forces and insulted our shared history too. Whatever marginal economic advantage those cringeworthy performances in the Oval Office and the prostituting out of the King won us have held but briefly.

If ever there was a career-saving PR victory to be had, then Starmer doubling down on the distance between himself and two men considered moral pariahs by his electorate is it. 

The PM and president reportedly spoke on the phone on Sunday. At the time of writing we do not know the content or tone of the conversation. We’ll probably get our first indication on Truth Social soon enough. But for god’s sake, let’s hope for his sake Starmer didn’t talk him back down too much. 

When Viv Nicholson in 1961 won 150 grand on the pools she said, famously, she was going to “spend, spend, spend”. She and her husband Keith did just that – burning through their surprise windfall (worth £3m in today’s money) in three quick years. 

In precisely the same spirit of joie de vivre, Starmer should not waste any time in spend, spend, spending this newly acquired political capital. He should rise up on Wednesday at PMQs and tell the House that Tony Blair’s attitude towards America epitomises everything that’s wrong with this nation. 

That nobody gets a blank British cheque when it comes to waging war. That this is a government who learns from the past and all its horrific mistakes; in this case Tony Blair’s horrific mistake. That this sovereign nation will call it as it sees it and that he will always, as he is fond of saying, act in Britain’s  national interest.

Sovereignty. After all, wasn’t that what those treacherous little lickspittles in the right wing media were crying for for so long? When Brexit flag-shaggers like Daniel Hannan are declaring Starmer’s decision to withhold use of airbases as our “worst national humiliation since Suez, if not the fall of Singapore” the level of political and historical idiocy really should not be that hard to leverage.

When the Daily Mail calls Blair’s rebuke a “stinging blow”, having not that long ago denounced Blair as a “monster of delusion” and a “sickening egomaniac” for not apologising for Britain’s part in Iraq, it really shouldn’t be too hard to point out their despicable moral inconsistency to a public who feel an innate loathing of that disastrous war, and a fear of any repeat.

Starmer should bask in Blair’s denunciation. His party will love him for it and most of the country will admire him for it, and it will expose the gulf between all those noxious Mail front pages and the true national sentiment.

And if Starmer’s spend, spend, spending only lasts him three years, that’s fine. Three years is – quite literally – all he needs.