Has Starmer lost control of his cabinet over Trump and Iran?
The News Agents
Global
4.1 • 5.4K Ratings
🗓️ 5 March 2026
⏱️ 44 minutes
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Summary
Much of the coverage of the Iran conflict this week has been trying to understand the British government’s position on America’s strikes. On Friday, Keir Starmer said that the UK would not allow American fighter jets headed for Iran to use British bases. And yet by Sunday, that position had changed. Why?
New reporting today may shed some light on that. Tim Shipman at the Spectator claims that Keir Starmer faced resistance, particularly from Ed Miliband and Yvette Cooper, when the National Security Council met late last week.
Was Keir Starmer effectively strong-armed into a diplomatic spat with Donald Trump by his own cabinet ministers? What does that say about his authority in the face of a major national - and international - crisis? And with criticism from allies including Cyprus about the sluggish reaction and deployment of British forces in the wake of Iranian aggression, has the past week been embarrassing for Britain on the world stage?
Plus, nearly a week on from Trump’s decision to strike at the heart of Iran and decapitate the regime in Tehran, are we actually any clearer on what his objectives are? We speak to Virginia Senator and vice-chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Mark Warner.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The Newsagents podcast is brought to you by HSBC UK, opening up a world of opportunity. |
| 0:09.0 | This is a global player original podcast. |
| 0:12.5 | Is it true that you wanted on Friday to give Americans a precautionary permission in the event of Iranian reprisals, |
| 0:22.6 | choose British bases for defensive action, but had your mind changed by Ed Miliband and other members of your cabinet? |
| 0:28.6 | Let me be really clear about this. |
| 0:31.6 | No request from the US came in the specific terms that we exceeded until Saturday afternoon. |
| 0:41.7 | Saturday after, well, just to hear me out. And therefore, on Friday there was no concrete |
| 0:47.9 | decision to be made. The decision had to be. If the story wasn't true, the obvious response from the Prime Minister would have been, |
| 0:56.0 | this is absolute nonsense and totally unfounded. That's not what Kirstama said. |
| 1:04.7 | The allegation is that Kirstama went into the Iran crisis wanting to do one thing, but was bullied, forced by his cabinet to do another. |
| 1:14.4 | Who is really in charge of this government and our foreign policy? |
| 1:19.1 | Welcome to the newsagents. |
| 1:25.2 | The news agents. |
| 1:26.9 | It's John. |
| 1:28.1 | It's Lewis. |
| 1:34.6 | And we have been listening to Kierth Stama for the last half an hour, giving a kind of broad tour de of the whole of the conflict and what it means for getting people back from the Gulf and how long |
| 1:39.8 | this might go on and what it's going to do economically and all the rest of it. |
| 1:42.7 | But the key questions around what is happening are political about who's in charge of the government and whether |
| 1:49.8 | we've let down some of our allies in the region. Yeah, so this all comes down to a piece which |
| 1:55.1 | has been published by Tim Shipman, who's the political editor of The Spectator. All week we have been discussing and |
| 2:02.7 | theorising and speculating on exactly how it might be that Trump has decided to do what he's done |
| 2:09.8 | now. And we've also been theorising and speculating on exactly why the British government |
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