DALLAS – Former British Prime Minister Liz Truss claimed the United Kingdom had failed to back Donald Trump’s strikes on Iran because it had to appease its Islamist backers.
She appeared at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Dallas, Texas with other European politicians to discuss why NATO allies had been so reluctant to support Trump’s war.
“The situation in Britain is that Britain is under socialist rule,” said the former Conservative leader.
“It’s not just socialist rule. We have a government that has to appease the Islamists. That’s why they have sat on the fence.”
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer infuriated Trump by refusing the use of British bases for strikes in the early phases of the war.
He has since allowed the bases to be used for defensive strikes, saying that their use must be compatible with international law, as he tries to keep in the President’s good graces.
Other European leaders have gone further by condemning the conflict and refusing any help at all.
Truss, whose 49 days in power make her the shortest-serving prime minister in British history, said Starmer was thinking only of his own voters.
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“That’s why they failed to offer up bases to be used for strikes against the appalling regime,” she continued. “Because they are concerned about what’s going on with their voter base, their Islamist voter base in Britain.”
She said European governments had also been complacent about the potential threat to energy in the event of conflict in the Middle East.
“As far as energy has been concerned, we have committed economic suicide by not fracking, by not drilling for oil and gas in the North Sea, and by instead supporting renewable energy, which is intermittent,” she said.
“We have left ourselves very exposed to energy shocks.”
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Truss’s short tenure has made her a figure of ridicule at home in the U.K. However, she is a frequent attendee at CPAC and other right-wing American events as she tries to find a place in the MAGAverse. She launched a podcast at the end of last year, focusing on confronting the “deep state” that tried to destroy her.
Truss was the most senior figure on a panel of international politicians ahead of the main CPAC conference that begins on Thursday.
Their discussion was punctuated by calls for quiet as hundreds of attendees milled around the convention hall to collect their accreditation. And every so often, a bell would sound from a watergun fairground attraction, indicating that someone had claimed a prize.
Against that backdrop, Ric Grenell, one of Trump’s top aides, asked why close allies had not supported Trump’s actions against Iran,
“There’s a big conversation in America about the amount of money that we give and that we aren’t all sharing the burden that we should,” he said. “I would put it to the table to ask what is the state of NATO and what is going on with Iran.”
Truss said Britain simply was not even able to send a warship to the Middle East to defend British interests in the region.
“Western Europe has expected the United States to bail us out,” she said. “We haven’t spent enough on defense, we haven’t made sure we have energy security.”
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