LONDON — Tony Blair has opened a fresh breach with Keir Starmer over Iran. Just don’t expect the current prime minister to lose much sleep over it.
At a private event hosted Friday by the British publication Jewish News, Blair said: “We should have backed America from the very beginning.”
He added: “If they are your ally and they are an indispensable cornerstone for your security … you had better show up.”
His comments pile more pressure on Starmer, who is already feeling the heat over the souring of his carefully crafted relationship with Donald Trump.
Yet Blair’s critique appears to have only hardened Starmer’s conviction that he made the right call in not granting untrammeled U.S. use of U.K. air bases — and gained the current Labour leader some kudos among the party faithful.
Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper, who first held a ministerial job under Blair, said on Sunday of her former boss: “I just disagree” — adding that it would not be in the national interest for Britain to follow America in all cases nor to withhold support in all cases.
A No. 10 official indicated that Downing Street shared her views.
It’s complicated
The fallout from U.S. strikes on Iran has laid bare perhaps the sharpest ideological contrast between Blair and Starmer to date.
Starmer’s rise to power has seen the pair build a complicated relationship. The two men both sought to reform Labour and wrest the party away from the left, so it was unsurprising that Blair served as a sounding board when Starmer was preparing for office.
Starmer mirrored Blair’s “mission-led” approach on entering No.10 and hired a raft of former Blair operatives, including Jonathan Powell to advise on national security and Alan Milburn to work on NHS reforms.
He gave plum Cabinet positions to Blair’s closest intellectual heirs, Wes Streeting and Peter Kyle. Most notoriously, he put Blair’s old lieutenant Peter Mandelson back at the apex of British politics by hiring him as U.S. ambassador, before being forced to sack him amid still-unfolding revelations about his closeness to Jeffrey Epstein.
Despite the numerous threads connecting them, Blair has been a recurring critic of Starmer’s policies, particularly on his net zero agenda, via his eponymous global think tank. But his latest intervention only underlines that when it comes to Iran, Starmer may be quite happy to find himself out of favor with Blair.
Starmer actively talked up the difference between his own actions on Iran and Blair’s role in sending troops to the Middle East, saying last week: “We’ve learnt the lessons of Iraq.”
One former adviser to Starmer, granted anonymity like others in this piece to speak candidly, said: “He [Blair] just needs to stop on the Middle East.”
They added that the rift highlighted that “Tony doesn’t rate Keir very much, while Keir doesn’t like being told what to do.”
Starmer’s MPs sound positively buoyant to be at odds with Blair, as large sections of the Labour Party agitate for a move to the left. One Labour MP elected under Starmer observed: “We’re in 2026, not 1996. It’s time for Britain’s foreign policy interests to be determined by Britain.”
‘A good conduit’
Neither Starmer nor the wider Labour Party is willing to shake off Blair’s influence altogether, however.
Powell, arguably the most powerful Blairite still in office, maintains a good relationship with both men while fully backing Starmer’s lawyerly position on Iran, according to two former colleagues.
Blair himself is of occasional use to Starmer too, particularly in the age of personality-driven diplomacy which Trump has encouraged since reentering the White House.
The former PM has a role on the executive of Trump’s Board of Peace for Gaza, which Starmer eventually opted not to join as Europeans grew increasingly sceptical about the forum.
Blair is “a good conduit” for understanding Trump’s intentions in the Middle East at the same time as maintaining traditional diplomatic channels, said a serving minister.
For his part, an ally of Blair insisted his words on Iran had not been intended as a rebuke to Starmer, pointing out that he had been speaking in private.
And if Starmer is unable to arrest the continued poor showing for Labour in the polls, he may yet seek his predecessor’s advice on his own future once again.
Sam Blewett contributed to this report.
Starmer allies turn against Blair over Iran critique
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