{"id":11474,"date":"2026-03-09T19:16:07","date_gmt":"2026-03-09T19:16:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/11474\/"},"modified":"2026-03-09T19:16:07","modified_gmt":"2026-03-09T19:16:07","slug":"starmer-allies-turn-against-blair-over-iran-critique-politico","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/11474\/","title":{"rendered":"Starmer allies turn against Blair over Iran critique \u2013 POLITICO"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Starmer mirrored Blair\u2019s \u201cmission-led\u201d approach on entering No.10 and hired a raft of former Blair operatives, including Jonathan Powell to advise on national security and Alan Milburn to work on NHS reforms.<\/p>\n<p>He gave plum Cabinet positions to Blair\u2019s closest intellectual heirs, Wes Streeting and Peter Kyle. Most notoriously, he put Blair\u2019s old lieutenant Peter Mandelson back at the apex of British politics by hiring him as U.S. ambassador, before being forced to sack him amid still-unfolding revelations about his closeness to Jeffrey Epstein.<\/p>\n<p>Despite the numerous threads connecting them, Blair has been a recurring critic of Starmer\u2019s policies, particularly <a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.eu\/article\/tony-blair-uk-should-drop-clean-power-targets\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">on his net zero agenda<\/a>, via his eponymous global think tank. But his latest intervention only underlines that when it comes to Iran, Starmer may be quite happy to find himself out of favor with Blair.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"683\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/GettyImages-2240457084-1024x683.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-8073984\"  \/>Neither Starmer nor the wider Labour Party is willing to shake off Blair\u2019s influence altogether, however. | Chip Somodevilla\/Getty Images<\/p>\n<p>Starmer actively talked up the difference between his own actions on Iran and Blair\u2019s role in sending troops to the Middle East, saying last week: \u201cWe\u2019ve learnt the lessons of Iraq.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>One former adviser to Starmer, granted anonymity like others in this piece to speak candidly, said: \u201cHe [Blair] just needs to stop on the Middle East.\u201d <\/p>\n<p>They added that the rift highlighted that \u201cTony doesn\u2019t rate Keir very much, while Keir doesn\u2019t like being told what to do.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Starmer mirrored Blair\u2019s \u201cmission-led\u201d approach on entering No.10 and hired a raft of former Blair operatives, including Jonathan&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":11475,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[799,3074,6498,989,38,159,34,94,688,49,690,6499,6500,6501,3040,443,2678,6502,691,51,6503,2680],"class_list":{"0":"post-11474","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-iran","8":"tag-afghanistan","9":"tag-americas","10":"tag-british-politics","11":"tag-diplomacy","12":"tag-donald-trump","13":"tag-foreign-policy","14":"tag-iran","15":"tag-iraq","16":"tag-keir-starmer","17":"tag-middle-east","18":"tag-missions","19":"tag-net-zero","20":"tag-peter-kyle","21":"tag-peter-mandelson","22":"tag-rights","23":"tag-security","24":"tag-tanks","25":"tag-tony-blair","26":"tag-united-kingdom","27":"tag-united-states","28":"tag-wes-streeting","29":"tag-yvette-cooper"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/116200825425459488","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11474","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11474"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11474\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11475"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11474"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11474"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11474"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}