Let’s not slavishly follow US and get sucked into Israel’s war – we don't want another Iraq

As the concern successful Lebanon escalates and we get further dragged into different Middle East war, Mirror columnist Paul Routledge says Starmer has nary parliamentary mandate and needs to spell retired precisely however acold the UK intends to get involved

Are we astatine warfare with Iran? RAF jets went into enactment to support Israel against rockets fired by the authorities successful Tehran. And Downing Street issued a tell-nothing two-sentence connection insisting that the UK stands with the Israelis.

Fine words, but not bully enough. The US seems blessed to beryllium dragged into warfare with the mullahs. But we are not bound to slavishly travel their lead. Not again. Not different Iraq.

Parliament is not sitting, and the Opposition is excessively engaged opposing itself to speech sense, but our authorities indispensable archer us, the citizens, however acold they mean to go.

Foreign Secretary David Lammy lamely bleats astir an contiguous ceasefire and a two-state solution for the Palestinians. Neither volition happen.

Meanwhile, we are being sucked into a Middle East war that has nary parliamentary sanction, nary rationale and nary wide goals. In a Mirror poll, 68% of readers fearfulness we are connected the brink of World War Three. Their anxiousness is justified.

I ask: Will our airmen beryllium ordered to weaponry Iran? Will determination beryllium British boots connected the crushed successful the Islamic Republic? Will the Navy occurrence missiles astatine Israel’s enemy? If so, why?

Nuclear-armed Israel, the astir almighty subject federation successful the region, bombs anyplace – including Iran – astatine will. Her right-wing, militarist authorities already has the full backing of the world’s top warfare machine, the US. If that isn’t enough, I don’t cognize what is.

I person visited Iraq, Iran, Syria, Egypt and Israel, sometimes by invitation, sometimes astatine my expense. I wouldn’t privation to unrecorded successful immoderate of them. And from wherever I stand, this is not our war.

Burning consciousness of work to alloy workers

The past coal-fired powerfulness station, Ratcliffe-on-Soar successful Nottinghamshire, closed down this week.

And the past coke-burning blast furnace at Port Talbot has cooled, bringing to an extremity superior steelmaking successful South Wales.

This is the extremity of an epoch, the last signifier of the Industrial Revolution, aft astir 300 years. Britain pioneered that process, changing the satellite for the better.

Coal fuelled the factories, brought energy to the masses and opened the globe to civilisation. It’s fashionable present to decry these large achievements, but not here. I wage tribute to the unsung generations of workers who delivered the modern nine we each bask – including self-appointed guardians of the planet.

Our mining communities were destroyed by the Tories. This authorities indispensable not let steelworkers and powerfulness presumption workers to stock that fate.

Labour has a work to marque the modulation to a caller mode of beingness arsenic painless and unafraid arsenic possible. These men and their families did the work. Now it’s payback time.