{"id":469739,"date":"2026-03-11T14:11:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-11T14:11:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/469739\/"},"modified":"2026-03-11T14:11:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-11T14:11:08","slug":"starmer-attacks-badenoch-and-farage-over-iran-war-support-u-turns-at-raucous-pmqs-pmqs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/469739\/","title":{"rendered":"Starmer attacks Badenoch and Farage over Iran war support U-turns at raucous PMQs | PMQs"},"content":{"rendered":"

Keir Starmer has attacked Kemi Badenoch<\/a> and Nigel Farage over their stance on the war in Iran, accusing both of U-turning on their support for Donald Trump.<\/p>\n

At a raucous prime minister\u2019s questions, Starmer accused the leader of the opposition of making the \u201cmother of all U-turns\u201d and furiously trying to backpedal after she denied calling for the UK to join the US president\u2019s war on Iran<\/a> on Tuesday, after previously saying Starmer should do more to \u201cstop the people who are attacking us\u201d.<\/p>\n

Last week Badenoch repeatedly pressed Starmer on his decision not to launch offensive strikes<\/a> to destroy missile bases, asking: \u201cWhy is he asking our allies to do what we should be doing ourselves?\u201d<\/p>\n

On Wednesday, Starmer said: \u201cIf I\u2019d asked her last week, her position would be, we support the initial strikes and we want to join the war. This week, she says, we don\u2019t want to join the war.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat is the mother of all U-turns on the single most important decision a prime minister ever has to take, whether to commit the United Kingdom to war or not.\u201d<\/p>\n

To cheers from his own backbenchers, he added: \u201cShe has utterly disqualified herself from ever becoming prime minister, thankfully she never will.\u201d<\/p>\n

Starmer told MPs that the UK\u2019s armed forces were \u201cworking day and night to protect British lives and British interests in the Middle East\u201d, adding that the RAF had flown more than 230 hours of defensive operations over multiple countries and shot down multiple drones. \u201cWe thank them for their courage and for their professionalism,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

He accused Badenoch of insulting the UK\u2019s RAF personnel by saying they were \u201cjust hanging about\u201d during an interview with BBC Breakfast<\/a> on Friday. Speaking in the Commons, Starmer said: \u201cLet me tell you what they\u2019ve been doing: flying sorties in seven of the 10 countries in the region, day and night, taking out incoming strikes, protecting the lives of others whilst risking their own.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf she had any decency, she\u2019d get up and she would apologise.\u201d<\/p>\n

Badenoch said she had never criticised the armed forces, but had criticised Starmer. She used her questions to repeatedly ask Starmer about petrol prices and why he thought \u201cnow is the right time to increase the cost of petrol?\u201d<\/p>\n

Starmer denied that the government was increasing the cost of petrol, saying fuel duty would remain frozen until September.<\/p>\n

The Liberal Democrat leader, Ed Davey<\/a>, said families were seeing petrol prices increase, mortgage rates go up and fixed energy deals get more expensive \u201call because of a war they did not start and do not support\u201d.<\/p>\n

Turning his criticism to the Tories and Reform, he added: \u201cThe leader of the Conservatives has been competing with [Nigel Farage] to be Donald Trump\u2019s biggest cheerleader, and the prime minister was right to reject their costly warmongering.\u201d<\/p>\n

Starmer said Davey was right, adding of Badenoch and Farage: \u201cLast week, they were urging us to join. If they had been leading the country, we\u2019d be at war.\u201d<\/p>\n

Davey called on Starmer \u201cto guarantee the energy bills won\u2019t rise by hundreds of pounds in July\u201d when the next quarterly price cap takes effect in July<\/a>. Ministers are understood to be thinking about how they might protect consumers, but analysts have said that household energy bills could climb by \u00a3160 a year<\/a> from this summer after the war in Iran<\/a> pushed the UK\u2019s gas market to a three-year high.<\/p>\n

Starmer said he wanted to \u201creassure households\u201d that the cap was in place until July. \u201cWe are working with the sector and with others and with allies to do everything we can to make sure those energy bills don\u2019t rise,\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019re working around the clock on that. The most important thing, the most effective thing we can do, is to work with our allies to find a way to de-escalate the situation.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Keir Starmer has attacked Kemi Badenoch and Nigel Farage over their stance on the war in Iran, accusing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":469740,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-469739","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/469739","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=469739"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/469739\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/469740"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=469739"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=469739"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=469739"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}