BBC
Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper has said Sir Keir Starmer is “right to stand up for Britain’s interests” after Donald Trump intensified his criticism of the prime minister’s response to the Iran conflict.
In a social media post, the US president said the UK was considering sending aircraft carriers to the Middle East but appeared dismissive of the move, writing: “We don’t need people that join Wars after we’ve already won!”
The Ministry of Defence has said one aircraft carrier has been placed on advanced readiness but Cooper would not confirm whether it would be sent to the region.
Responding to Trump’s rebuke, Cooper said the UK government would not agree with the president “on every issue”.
Speaking to Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg, she said: “It’s for the US president to decide what he thinks is in the US national interest, and that’s for him to do.
“But it is our job as the UK government to decide what’s in the UK national interest, and that doesn’t mean simply agreeing with other countries or outsourcing our foreign policy to other countries.”
The UK did not join initial US-Israel strikes on Iran but subsequently gave permission for the US to use British bases to conduct defensive strikes.
It has also sent RAF jets to the region to shoot down missiles and drones fired by Iran at UK allies.
On Friday, former Labour Prime Minister Sir Tony Blair – who led the UK into the Iraq war in 2003 – told a private event that the UK should have backed the strikes from the beginning.
He said the US was an “indispensable cornerstone” of the UK’s security, and that allies should “show up” regardless of who the current president is.
Cooper, who was a junior minister in Sir Tony’s government when the UK joined the US invasion of Iraq, said it was “important to learn lessons from what went wrong” in that conflict.
She said that included “recognising that all our decisions need to be about what is right for British citizens”.
The foreign secretary said “there are some people in politics who think we should just unquestioningly agree with the US whatever” while others “think we should never agree with the US” or “go along with joint action” but that neither was the right approach.
