Chris Whiteside's Blog

Private citizens and journalists have the luxury of sitting on the fence and pointing out both that the Iranian regime is a ghastly bunch of murderers who have been oppressing the Iranian people and exporting terror around the world and that there are some very real issues with the attack on Iran by the USA and Israel. Governments don't have that luxury. Sir Keir Starmer's government has managed to infuriate both our US allies and those who don't agree with them by appearing to sit on the fence, condemning our country to irrelevance. As Andrew Neil wrote this morning, " Defence secretary John Healey is a decent man in a difficult job since, at a time of growing global threats, he’s part of a government that won’t spend more on defence.  He also picked the short straw by having to do this morning’s media rounds.  He was unable to answer a simple question put to him multiple times — do we or do we not support US/Israeli attacks on Iran?  This after the government had 24 ...

It is not all that often that you find a balanced and nuanced perspective on a political or religious issue in a tweet on X, formerly Twitter. Nevertheless I found one this morning. I rarely have as much sympathy and understanding for the position of people who have come down on the opposite side of an issue from me as I have over the attacks on Iran. (Brexit was another but let's not open that can of worms.) I explained yesterday  here , the position of the Conservative leadership, which I agree with. I quoted in that post the statements by Kemi Badenoch and Priti Patel. I have read the opinion by the shadow attorney general on why he believes the attacks on Iran by the US and Israel were justified under international law, which I will repost on my blog shortly, and his argument convinces me, though I respect those who take a different view. The views in the rest of this post are my own and not necessarily those of the Conservative party. My view, on balance, is that the Iranian t...

  “It was one of those March days when the sun shines hot and the wind blows cold: when it is summer in the light, and winter in the shade.” — Charles Dickens , Great Expectations