Rob Powell,<\/a> political correspondent<\/p>\nIn normal times (whatever they are), UK assistance in an operation like this probably wouldn’t be seen as too much of a big deal.<\/p>\n
The UK and US are close military allies.<\/p>\n
The tanker in question has links back to Russia, Iran and Venezuela – and is sanctioned by the US.<\/p>\n
Tackling the so-called “shadow fleet” of vessels attempting to avoid restrictions has been a priority for the UK.<\/p>\n
What gives events of today more bite is the geopolitical climate they are set against.<\/p>\n
Worry in Westminster<\/p>\n
Of course, there are the ongoing tensions between Russia and the West and the risk of the Ukraine conflict spilling out into other parts of the world.<\/p>\n
But the friction being generated by President Trump’s recent escapades may also cause some in Westminster to worry about UK military involvement.<\/p>\n
If we’re helping here – might requests come in for assistance in more controversial operations?<\/p>\n
One of the very first comments from Downing Street after the Caracas raid was to explicitly state that the UK was not involved in any way.<\/p>\n
There’s a tightrope to walk here.<\/p>\n
He may not say it out loud, but events in Venezuela will not sit comfortably with the ex-human rights barrister running the UK government.<\/p>\n
Threats towards Greenland certainly don’t sit well, and Sir Keir Starmer has put that into words.<\/p>\n
But we still need the US – its military might and its economic might.<\/p>\n
So when the White House says “jump”, it\u2019s still a fair bet that Downing Street will ask “how high?”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Analysis: Why the UK is walking a tightrope – and the worry spreading in Westminster By Rob Powell,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":395105,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[49,48,75,348],"class_list":["post-395104","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-entertainment","tag-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/395104","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=395104"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/395104\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/395105"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=395104"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=395104"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=395104"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}