Nigel Farage has been accused of making a U-turn after he said Britain should not get involved in Donald Trump\u2019s war with Iran.<\/p>\n
His comments on Tuesday contrasted with his previous assertion that the \u201cgloves need to come off\u201d when dealing with Iran.<\/p>\n
Anna Turley, chair of the Labour party, said: \u201cReform wanted the UK to go to war in Iran and are now trying to cover up the consequences for British families, including higher fuel prices.\u201d<\/p>\n
While Farage has insisted he does not heed public opinion, a YouGov poll showed Reform\u2019s 2024 voters are split, with nearly a quarter (24%) wanting the UK to actively join the attack on Iran and 63% supporting either a retaliatory or defensive position.<\/p>\n
The conflict has exposed existing fault lines among senior Reform figures over foreign policy and the extent to which the UK should take a more isolationist \u201cBritain First\u201d position \u2013 an echo of splits in Trump\u2019s own conservative base in the US. Here is what key figures have said.<\/p>\n
Nigel Farage<\/p>\n
On Tuesday, Farage said: \u201cThere are differing opinions as to whether we should physically join the attacks. I, as leader, am saying to you, if we can\u2019t even defend Cyprus, let\u2019s not get ourselves involved in another foreign war.\u201d<\/p>\n
This contrasts with his first public comments after the start of the war, when he said that he was in favour of \u201cregime change\u201d in Iran and told a press conference in Westminster: \u201cWe should do all we can to support the operation.\u201d<\/p>\n
Richard Tice<\/p>\n
Reform\u2019s deputy leader has taken a gung-ho stance from the start. In recent years, he has split his time between his Lincolnshire constituency and Dubai, where his partner lives.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe would be helping the Americans and the Israelis in any way they saw appropriate because this is a strategic, permanent threat to all of our safety and interest,\u201d he has said. \u201cIf requests were made, we would have been saying: \u2018Yes, we are pleased to help.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Robert Jenrick<\/p>\n
The former Conservative minister and Reform Treasury spokesperson laid out an explicitly \u201chands off\u201d position on Monday. Writing in the Telegraph, he said a prolonged conflict would send prices spiralling and hurt British consumers.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are a party for working people, not drawn-out wars in faraway places,\u201d wrote Jenrick, lambasting \u201cthe liberal interventionists of the early 21st century. The British people have had enough of them. It\u2019s time to be realists and put Britain first.\u201d<\/p>\n
Andrea Jenkyns<\/p>\n
The mayor of Greater Lincolnshire, who holds Reform\u2019s most powerful public post, went as far as floating the prospect that she could support British troops on the ground in Iran.<\/p>\n
\u201cDo I want to see British troops on the ground? Ideally not at this stage,\u201d she said, when asked on Sky News on Monday. \u201cYou can\u2019t rule anything out. It\u2019s too hostile. We don\u2019t know the direction it is going to go in. Should we be using more of our weapons? Most certainly.\u201d<\/p>\n
Nadhim Zahawi<\/p>\n
The recently recruited Reform member and former Conservative chancellor told the Sun last month that Britain should support and join the US and Israel\u2019s bombing of Iran.<\/p>\n
On Sunday, he told Times Radio that the UK should at least have made its bases available to the US from the start for offensive and \u201cmake everything available to our greatest ally, the United States of America\u201d.<\/p>\n
Zahawi, who was born into a Kurdish-Iraqi family which fled Saddam Hussein, said Iran had to stay \u201ccoherent as a nation\u201d, but he recognised that the US was determined to create an environment for the Iranian people \u201cto rise up again\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nigel Farage has been accused of making a U-turn after he said Britain should not get involved in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":468351,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":["post-468350","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/468350","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=468350"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/468350\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/468351"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=468350"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=468350"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=468350"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}