This chilling phrase came from the IRA in attempting to assassinate Margaret Thatcher in the 1984 Brighton hotel bombing.

It also applies to Iran and America today. The brutal regime in Iran seems to be able to absorb endless devastating attacks. Can America really withstand the one time lucky strike which results in a large number of American casualties?

It has been a tough time for the US president…

Trump has the potential to double down on his foray into the Middle East. The war will be over in weeks he says yet adds confusion to his war aims by planning further mass bombing raids with thousands of soldiers deployed for potential on the ground fighting. Whatever the cruelty of the Iranian regime and its ability to in flict harm on its own people, you can hardly blame it for being reluctant to negotiate with a president who walked away in the middle of talks on nuclear arms and now only proceeds through sticks and no carrots.

Meanwhile, Netanyahu is prepared for a long war believing Iran continues to pose an existential threat to Israel. Iran poses no such threat to America as Trump’s own military leadership confirmed to him. His approval ratings amongst voters for this self-inflicted war has dropped to 36%. The mid-terms are looking grim for Republicans. One lucky attack by Iran on American soldiers with multiple casualties will probably make Trump buckle. It would be game over for his presidency.

You can see why the Iranian regime, crushed militarily except for mysteriously hidden drones and missiles, currently seems confident in holding on…

So what are the consequences of all this for the UK? The only silver lining to this terrible conflict is Starmer standing up to Trump and proving the inevitable logic of the UK in some form embracing the European Union driven by Trump’s threat to leave NATO and the war in Ukraine. For Putin, Trump is a gift that keeps giving.

The long term consequences of this global mayhem is that the UK and continental Europe will never be fully able to rely on America again for its defence whoever is president. This war may be over in a few weeks but its fall-out will be long lasting whether it be in terms of the economy, military alliances or the balance of global power.

Against this backdrop, the UK has local and regional elections in May where the Labour Party is forecast to fare incredibly badly with some colleagues and the media whipping up a scenario of Starmer being replaced as leader. This is no time to change prime minister. It would seem parochial and self-indulgent at best with no electoral advantage for Labour. There should be more unity in British politics in these times of peril.

Finally, to finish on a positive note since it is Easter, how exhilarating to watch the launch of Nasa’s Artemis II mission towards the moon. It is this sort of event which makes America Great…

The war with Iran is starting to feel like a quagmire. Iran’s defence capability has largely been eradicated by the US and Israel and yet, and yet… Some Iranian missiles and quite a few drones are still threatening the region. Oil and gas prices have surged. Ayatollah Khamenei’s son is the new Supreme Leader. Mojtaba Khamenei is a hardliner and one doubts he will soften the regime, particularly having lost his father, mother, wife and a son in air strikes.

The destruction spreads as war on Iran and its supporters continues…

So what is left? An extremist Iranian regime in place, playing with oil and gas prices with drones (how war has changed), waiting for Trump to lose interest. The longer this conflict goes on, the more you feel Trump has been played by Netanyahu. Israel will feel safer than it did particularly with additional excursions into Lebanon but Trump will have got very little from this war and markets will decide Trump’s next actions not international law or morality.

And globally? Where has the UN been? To think of the efforts Blair and Bush made trying to get UN approval for the invasion of Iraq even if it didn’t matter in the end. Putin and Xi must be rubbing their hands with glee at the tearing up of the international order. Putin will use every opportunity to double down on his invasion of Ukraine whilst the Taiwanese will be sleeping less easily in their beds.

Against this chaotic, immoral background, Starmer has done a good job in holding the middle ground and is broadly where the British public are on this war, although they give him little credit. He applied international law at the start of the campaign against Iran by denying the US UK bases, only to loosen this when international law allowed. In appearing as lapdogs to Trump, the Tories and Reform have been hopeless and quite frankly stupid. In particular, it has not been Kemi Badenoch’s finest hour who’s military analysis has been amateur at best. What happened to UK unity at least at the start of a threatening international conflict? Meanwhile, anarchistic Greens and the LibDems from the other extreme eschew all common sense in goading Trump and should be rightly ignored.

I am not usually a fan but Yvette Cooper, Foreign Secretary, put it perfectly in an interview. ‘The UK does not agree with Trump on every issue and cannot outsource foreign policy to others’. Good for her.

Except for the far too slow pace of moving warships to the region, we should be sticking with Starmer on this issue and actually longer term too until the Opposition make any sense at all.