Nigel Farage accused of U-turn as he says UK should keep out of Iran war
Nigel Farage has been accused of making a U-turn after he said Britain should not get involved in Donald Trump’s war with Iran.His comments on Tuesday contrasted with his previous assertion that the “gloves need to come off” when dealing with Iran.Anna Turley, chair of the Labour party, said: “Reform wanted the UK to go to war in Iran and are now trying to cover up the consequences for British families, including higher fuel prices.”While Farage has insisted he does not heed public opinion, a YouGov poll showed Reform’s 2024 voters are split, with nearly a quarter (24%) wanting the UK to actively join the attack on Iran and 63% supporting either a retaliatory or defensive position.The conflict has exposed existing fault lines among senior Reform figures over foreign policy and the extent to which the UK should take a more isolationist “Britain First” position – an echo of splits in Trump’s own conservative base in the US.
Here is what key figures have said.On Tuesday, Farage said: “There are differing opinions as to whether we should physically join the attacks.I, as leader, am saying to you, if we can’t even defend Cyprus, let’s not get ourselves involved in another foreign war.”This contrasts with his first public comments after the start of the war, when he said that he was in favour of “regime change” in Iran and told a press conference in Westminster: “We should do all we can to support the operation.”Reform’s deputy leader has taken a gung-ho stance from the start.
In recent years, he has split his time between his Lincolnshire constituency and Dubai, where his partner lives.“We would be helping the Americans and the Israelis in any way they saw appropriate because this is a strategic, permanent threat to all of our safety and interest,” he has said.“If requests were made, we would have been saying: ‘Yes, we are pleased to help.’”The former Conservative minister and Reform Treasury spokesperson laid out an explicitly “hands off” position on Monday.Writing in the Telegraph, he said a prolonged conflict would send prices spiralling and hurt British consumers.
“We are a party for working people, not drawn-out wars in faraway places,” wrote Jenrick, lambasting “the liberal interventionists of the early 21st century.The British people have had enough of them.It’s time to be realists and put Britain first.”The mayor of Greater Lincolnshire, who holds Reform’s most powerful public post, went as far as floating the prospect that she could support British troops on the ground in Iran.“Do I want to see British troops on the ground? Ideally not at this stage,” she said, when asked on Sky News on Monday.
“You can’t rule anything out.It’s too hostile.We don’t know the direction it is going to go in.Should we be using more of our weapons? Most certainly.”The recently recruited Reform member and former Conservative chancellor told the Sun last month that Britain should support and join the US and Israel’s bombing of Iran.
On Sunday, he told Times Radio that the UK should at least have made its bases available to the US from the start for offensive and “make everything available to our greatest ally, the United States of America”,Zahawi, who was born into a Kurdish-Iraqi family which fled Saddam Hussein, said Iran had to stay “coherent as a nation”, but he recognised that the US was determined to create an environment for the Iranian people “to rise up again”,
Middle East crisis could push UK inflation back up to 3%, says OBR
UK inflation could end the year higher than previously expected at 3% because of the US-Israel war in Iran, the government’s economics watchdog has said.David Miles, a senior figure at the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), said inflation could end the year a percentage point higher than expected before the war, because of the energy price shock triggered by the crisis in the Middle East.The oil price fell on Tuesday after rising above $100 a barrel on Sunday, but it is still significantly higher than before the US and Israel began bombing Iran just under a fortnight ago. A barrel of Brent crude was trading at $85 on Tuesday evening.Miles told the Commons Treasury committee that if current energy prices were sustained, the UK would face a “material, significant” increase in inflation, delivering a noticeable and unwelcome increase in living costs for British households
Pipeline of new drugs to fight superbugs is ‘worryingly thin’, experts warn
The pipeline of new drugs to fight superbugs remains “worryingly thin” and has shrunk by 35% in the last five years, experts have said, predicting the annual number of deaths linked to drug-resistant infections globally will double to 8 million by 2050.The number of antimicrobial projects from large pharma companies has shrunk by 35% over the past five years, from 92 to 60 medicines in development, according to a report from the Access to Medicine Foundation (AMF), a Netherlands-based non-profit group, backed by the Wellcome Trust. Only five medicines are in development for children under five, who are more vulnerable to infections.“Overall, the research and development pipeline remains worryingly thin, and industry investment has lost momentum,” said Jayasree K Iyer, the foundation’s chief executive. She described drug resistance as the biggest single threat to healthcare worldwide
Datacenters are becoming a target in warfare for the first time
Hello, and welcome to TechScape. I’m your host, Blake Montgomery. If you enjoy reading this newsletter, please forward it to someone you think would as well.Iran is bombing datacenters in the Persian Gulf to blow up symbols of the Gulf states’ technological alliance with the United States. Added bonus: they will be extremely costly to rebuild, being among the most expensive buildings in history
‘I wish I could push ChatGPT off a cliff’: professors scramble to save critical thinking in an age of AI
Lea Pao, a professor of literature at Stanford University, has been experimenting with ways to get her students to learn offline. She has them memorize poems, perform at recitation events, look at art in the real world.It’s an effort to reconnect them to the bodily experience of learning, she said, and to keep them from turning to artificial intelligence to do the work for them. “There’s no AI-proof anything,” Pao said. “Rather than policing it, I hope that their overall experiences in this class will show them that there’s a way out
Cheltenham festival 2026: Lossiemouth leaves rivals in wake to win Champion Hurdle – as it happened
Here’s Greg Wood’s report on day one, thanks for following today’s action and please join us tomorrow. We go again.No sooner had Lossiemouth lifted the roof off Cheltenham with a staggeringly dominant Champion Hurdle victory than the skies around Prestbury Park also began to brighten too. The buildup to the festival had been dominated by talk of civil war, of feuding and internecine conflict. But this was a reminder of the sport’s simple pleasures
Former Super Bowl champion asked ChatGPT about injuries before girlfriend’s death, court hears
Former New York Jets linebacker Darron Lee appeared in a Tennessee courtroom on Tuesday as prosecutors outlined evidence they say ties him to the killing of his girlfriend, including messages where he asked ChatGPT questions about injuries and how to handle an unresponsive person, according to Chattanooga’s CBS affiliate WDEF.Lee, 30, is charged with first-degree murder in the death of Gabriella Perpétuo at the couple’s home in Ooltewah, about 20 miles northeast of Chattanooga. Deputies were called to the residence last month for a reported medical emergency and found Perpétuo unconscious on the living room floor. The medics were unable to save her and WTVC NewsChannel 9 reported she had suffered a suspected stab wound in addition to other injuries.During a preliminary hearing in Hamilton County court, prosecutors introduced body-camera footage from deputies who responded to the scene
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