The resumption of United States strikes against Iran has presented incoming UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham with a potential first-day decision on how far Britain should go in supporting its closest ally’s military campaign.
Even as Burnham was installed as Labour leader on Friday, outgoing Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s government was holding high-level talks about the renewed US attacks, which had entered their seventh consecutive night, according to people familiar with the matter who asked not to be named discussing sensitive security issues. The same people said the incoming British prime minister-in-waiting was being kept informed of the strikes throughout the day.
A Policy Already In Motion?
Burnham inherits a position that Starmer had shaped incrementally over several months. Starmer declined to join the initial US sorties against Iran in February, but subsequently allowed British bases to be used for defensive strikes intended to degrade Iran’s military capabilities and counter threats to the Strait of Hormuz.
The US has relied on facilities including RAF Fairford in Gloucestershire as a launching point for operations in the Middle East. Trump has criticised Starmer over the arrangement regardless, accusing Britain of failing to support the US at a moment of need.
That gradual shift, from refusal to conditional cooperation, has left Britain in a position that satisfies neither Washington nor the critics at home who argue any use of UK bases risks drawing the country deeper into the conflict. Officials involved in the earlier decisions say the distinction between defensive and offensive use of the bases was designed to give Starmer’s government room to support Washington without appearing to endorse strikes on Iranian soil directly, a compromise that held for months but did little to ease Trump’s public frustration with London.
Burnham will now have to decide whether to preserve that arrangement, tighten it, or expand it, at a moment when the military situation on the ground has already moved past the terms on which it was originally agreed. People familiar with the government’s internal discussions say officials are wary of assuming continuity, since Burnham has given no public indication of how closely he intends to follow Starmer’s approach, and his limited public record on foreign policy leaves both allies and adversaries with little to go on ahead of his first calls with the White House.
Fresh Talks Over Continued Base Access
The latest escalation has prompted renewed discussions within the British government in recent days, including on Friday, over whether to continue approving use of the bases, with officials said to be particularly concerned by Trump’s threats to strike Iranian civilian infrastructure. Burnham has been kept informed of developments, and his team has been in contact with officials managing the government’s response, according to people familiar with the matter. Spokespeople for 10 Downing Street and for Burnham’s office declined to comment.
Burnham has said comparatively little about foreign policy during the weeks in which he was the favourite to succeed Starmer. During an earlier period in Parliament, he voted in support of the Iraq war but against expanding military action against Islamic State in Syria.
Burnham Signals His Approach to Trump
Speaking on the Goalhanger podcast earlier this week, Burnham indicated he intended to be direct with Trump once the two meet. “It’s about respecting the office, the relationship – the UK-US relationship – but where you disagree, do it, but do it in a way that is kind of meeting him where he’s at,” he said.
According to a Bloomberg report on Friday, UK officials are preparing to tell Burnham, once he becomes prime minister, that they assess Trump is serious about his threats to bomb Iranian civilian infrastructure should Tehran not return to the negotiating table.
The briefing is also expected to convey the US view that its blockade of the Strait of Hormuz is exerting effective pressure on Iran so long as it is sustained over an extended period, a calculation that could point to a prolonged next phase of the conflict, the people said.
Domestic Agenda May Be Delayed
Government officials have privately said Burnham may need to engage immediately with international counterparts to help de-escalate the situation in the Middle East, a demand that could divert attention from the domestic agenda he had planned to pursue in his first days in office, including announcements on North Sea fossil fuel drilling and public ownership of the water industry.
Officials involved in the transition said the calendar for Burnham’s opening days in Downing Street had already been tightly choreographed around those domestic announcements, intended to signal a decisive break from Starmer’s final, crisis-dominated months in office.
A sustained Iran crisis would complicate that plan, potentially forcing Burnham to split his time between calls with Washington and other allies and the rollout of policies designed to reassure Labour MPs and voters that his government intends to govern differently from the one it replaced.
The competing demands also carry political risk for Burnham beyond scheduling. Any perception that his government is being pulled off course by an inherited foreign policy crisis, before it has had the chance to establish its own priorities, could feed criticism from within his own party that he is failing to deliver the change that many backbenchers expected when they helped remove Starmer. Aides say Burnham is aware of that risk and intends to press ahead with at least some domestic announcements in his first week regardless of how the situation in the Middle East develops.
