Keir Starmer has been told to “do better” in a scathing assessment after the Prime Minister said he was “fed up” with the actions of President Trump.
Appearing on GB News, Telegraph Foreign Affairs Correspondent David Blair argued that the remarks did not meet the challenge posed by increasing global turmoil.
Speaking while touring the Gulf, Sir Keir admitted: “I'm fed up with the fact that families across the country see their bills go up and down on energy businesses' bills go up and down on energy because of the actions of Putin or Trump across the world.”
Mr Blair was less than impressed, despairing: “I don't pay my Prime Minister to be fed up. I pay the Prime Minister to act.”
“When you're the Prime Minister of the six biggest economies in the world, you should be able to do a bit better than express your frustration,” the foreign policy expert said.
To that end, Mr Blair hit out at Sir Keir’s response to the war with Iran.
“We've just had six weeks where British people in the Gulf, about 300,000 of them, have been living in countries targeted by Iranian ballistic missiles.
“Now we still have six destroyers that can shoot these things down, but not one of them was in the right place at the right time.
“Keir Starmer still hasn't answered the question of why he neglected to take that step,” Mr Blair said.
While the Telegraph writer felt the Prime Minister’s remarks about President Trump were not “entirely fair”, he admitted that: “I can see his point”.
“We have enormously disruptive forces in the world today. And when you're a medium-sized power like Britain, you're inevitably vulnerable to that.
“But we pay our government to minimise our vulnerability, to ensure us against risks.
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“If they're going to do that, the first thing they've got to do is get serious about spending more on defence. We're not doing that at the moment.”
Mr Blair was questioned on the UK’s leading role in convening a coalition of nations to ensure the Strait of Hormuz remains open, a move celebrated by Nato chief Mark Rutte on Thursday.
“Anybody can be a convening power. Sweden can be a convening power. Switzerland can be a convenient power.
“The sixth biggest economy in the world should aim a little higher than simply to convene others.
“We should be in the business of being one of the security partners of our friends in the Gulf, not least because 300,000 British people live there,” Mr Blair reiterated.
The Prime Minister was not alone in his criticism of President Trump, as Nigel Farage agreed that the US leader must “take some blame” for the economic fallout of the war with Iran.
“If Trump and Israel do stuff, it affects us. No doubt about that,” the Reform UK leader said.
Mr Farage simply answered “yes” when asked if he would assign “some of the blame for the economic impact of what's going on in the Middle East at the feet of Trump”.
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