London Diary: UK-US ‘special relationship’ in trouble over Iran crisis

US President Donald Trump once famously lavished praise on Keir Starmer’s “beautiful accent” and — hold your breath — his “beautiful, great” wife while welcoming them to the White House in February 2025 when the British prime minister handed him a personal letter from King Charles offering Trump a state visit to Britain.

Now, however, Trump is furious with Starmer for refusing to allow Americans to use UK bases to launch military strikes against Iran. He called him a “loser” and said: “This is not Winston Churchill that we’re dealing with”.

Starmer initially argued that the strikes were illegal and said, “This government does not believe in regime change from the sky.” (He has since done a U-turn, claiming that Iran’s retaliatory strikes pose a threat to Britain’s security.)

Suddenly, not only does the historic US-UK ‘special relationship’ seem to be in serious trouble, Starmer also finds himself caught between pro- and anti-war factions in his own Labour Party. Its significant Muslim constituency is threatening to defect to the pacifist Green Party whose charismatic leader Zack Polanski has taken a strong anti-US stand.

In the London assembly, Polanski voted against a motion welcoming the ‘removal’ (read assassination) of Ayatollah Khamenei. While acknowledging that Khamenei’s regime was “brutal”, he called US-Israeli action “an illegal and unprovoked attack by the US government and the Israeli state”, adding that he strongly hoped “recent events mark the start of a new chapter for Iran”. He also refused to support another motion condemning the vandalism of Churchill’s statute in Parliament Square.

Never a popular figure either within his own party or outside, Starmer’s ratings have fallen drastically in recent years. putting a question mark over his political future.

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Leicester riots: whodunit?

Recriminations over the identity of the troublemakers behind the 2022 Hindu-Muslim riots in Leicester continue to rock community relations.

Hindu groups have reacted with anger to a report blaming Hindutva elements for exacerbating tensions following India’s victory celebrations post the India-Pakistan Asia Cup match in Dubai. They have rejected the report and expressed concerns about the inquiry committee’s impartiality, funding and composition.

The report — led by SOAS (School of Oriental and African Studies), London School of Economics and the Monitoring Group — was boycotted by most Hindu organisations. While the inquiry found that no single community was to blame, it held Hindu extremist elements largely responsible for inflaming passions.

The Hindu Community Organisations Group (HCOG) Leicester, which claims to represent over 50,000 Hindus, said the inquiry was funded by a £620,000 grant from George Soros, “known for his critical stance on India and Hindus”.

It claimed that, contrary to the report’s findings, Hindus suffered the most. “The Leicester violence in 2022 saw targeted attacks on Hindu homes, temples and individuals, with clear anti-Hindu sentiments evidenced in acts such as the vandalism of a Hindu temple and assaults on Hindu youth. Yet the SOAS inquiry seems to downplay these incidents while amplifying unverified claims,” said the HCOG.

Once hailed as an inclusive ‘Little India’, today Leicester resembles the polarised ‘new India’ more than a British multicultural city.

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Coming soon: a crackdown on dependants of foreign workers

Family members of UK visa holders living here as workers or students, be warned. A crackdown on the ‘human baggage’ that accompanies foreign workers and scholars is coming after it emerged that the sharp rise in new arrivals in Britain is not — as is generally assumed — driven by job-seekers but by family members allowed to accompany them.

As many as 83 per cent of the 3.5 million non-EU citizens who arrived — and stayed on — in Britain since Brexit were international students and family members who were allowed to accompany both students and migrant workers. According to a new study, only 17 per cent came on work visas.

Academics at Oxford University’s Migration Observatory, who carried out the research, said the findings mean that a series of restrictions on work visas announced by successive governments since 2023 to reduce overall levels of immigration will affect only a minority of working migrants.

Which, to put it bluntly, makes nonsense of the government’s plans to restrict work visas. What it needs is a crackdown on the ‘baggage’ migrants carry — their dependants. So, think twice before wanting to ride to Britain on the back of a visa-holding family member.

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Muslims and Jews bond over fish and chips

Even as Britain’s Muslim and Jewish communities continue to exchange barbs, to put it mildly, over Israeli actions in Gaza, a Muslim-owned fish-and-chips shop in Leeds, Yorkshire, has become an unlikely symbol of inter-faith unity.

At the request of local rabbi Anthony Gilbert, shop owners Jenade Yamin and Arabaab ‘Paddy’ Munir introduced kosher options alongside their halal menu to cater to the city’s Jewish community.

TV celebrity Rob Rinder, whose grandfather was a kosher caterer specialising in fish, hailed it as “a glimpse of the country we can still choose to be”.

And, finally, in a recent bye-election in Manchester for a seat with a large number of Pak-origin immigrants, a video produced by the Green Party in Urdu depicted Prime Minister Keir Starmer shaking hands with Narendra Modi (who is a deeply unpopular figure in Pakistan). And the trick worked. Greens won the Labour-held seat — pushing Labour to third place.