PM ‘weak and indecisive’ on Middle East conflict, Tories claim

THE Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary has criticised Sir Keir Starmer for being “weak and indecisive” on the conflict in the Middle East.

Helen Whately told GB News: “I’m really frustrated with our Prime Minister, with Keir Starmer. To me, we’ve got a very serious situation in the Middle East, and he is showing himself at his weak and indecisive worse, just sitting on the fence.

“This is a time where we have an ally in the US. There are other countries, Australia, Canada, who’ve been standing alongside the US, while Keir Starmer has just been weak and hiding behind international law and indecisive.

“One of the ridiculous parts of the situation we’re in is that we should, and in the past, we’ve had a warship in the Middle East, in the region. At the moment we don’t have, there’s been this huge delay around sending off one of our ships, even from the UK, and it’s only just on the way there.

“We have a naval base in Bahrain, but that doesn’t have the destroyers or minesweepers there, though it has the capacity for that. The Conservative position on this is very different from the position that Labour and Keir Starmer have taken.

“Kemi Badenoch was clear that we would have allowed the US to use our military bases, and that we think that we should be standing up and defending our own personnel and our own assets in the Middle East.”

She added: “I can’t stand here and say exactly how military or naval assets should be deployed from the UK. But what I can say is that I am frustrated at how weak and indecisive Keir Starmer is being about this situation.”

Asked about the Kent meningitis outbreak, she said: “I’m really, really concerned. As a Kent MP, the school where one of the children are Year 13, the pupil has tragically died. That’s in my constituency.

“I’m a local parent as well, with my own child in Year 13. I know that that year group, the sort of 18-year-olds and the students, they socialised together in Canterbury, and we know that this was spreading the weekend before last, over the fifth, sixth, seventh of March.

“It’s really, really important that the UK Health Security Agency gets on this very fast. They have started inviting those young people who are potentially contacts to come for antibiotics against meningitis. It’s really important that those who are affected come forwards and take those.”