Kemi Badenoch says Trump ‘should not abandon mess he’s made’ in Middle East
Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch warned US President Donald Trump that he should not walk away from the Middle East war.
Ms. Badenoch said her message to Mr. Trump would be: “If you break it, you own it.”
Speaking to broadcasters on Thursday, Ms Badenoch said: “The special relationship is between the UK and the US, not between Donald Trump and (Prime Minister) Keir Starmer or whoever holds those offices.”
He said the US “is a close military ally, they are very helpful to Britain’s security”.
Ms Badenoch continued: “But if I had talked to him, I would have said, ‘If you break it, you own it.’ That’s what the former US secretary of state, Colin Powell, said. ‘If you break it, you own it.’
“He started this war.”
He added that Mr Trump “should not give up on the mess he has created if he thinks it is a mess” and said: “It doesn’t sound like there is a coordinated plan.
“What we want to see is for our government to show that it is thinking ahead and prepared.
“The best thing he can do right now for our security is to increase supply by drilling our own oil and gas in the North Sea.”
Reform UK leader Nigel Farage also questioned Mr Trump’s intentions and suggested his motivation for fighting Iran was unclear.
Mr Farage, whom Mr Trump has previously described as a “friend”, said entering Iran was against the US president’s instincts.
Party leaders sought to woo Trump’s allies shortly after his election in 2024; Both met with vice president J.D. Vance during his visits to the United States in December of the same year.
Chancellor Rachel Reeves said in a statement Wednesday that she was “outraged that Donald Trump chose to engage in a war in the Middle East with no clear plan on how to get out of it.”
He told BBC Radio 2: “That’s why we didn’t want to get into it.
“Yes, this will have impacts on our economy, I understand that.
“We’re watching what’s happening very closely, trying to bring oil and gas into the UK so those supplies are there and we’ll try to get prices down.”
Following his comments, Mr Farage told a press conference: “I’m not mad at him for starting this war – and if he was elected by saying, by the way, no more endless foreign wars. His instinct is not to do that.”
“And it’s not something he’s been discussing since he became president; he’s been making these arguments for over 20 years, long before he got into politics and asking questions about open-ended wars.
“So what is it? OK, Israeli encouragement, I understand that. You know, the Israelis are there and Iran wants to destroy and kill them, so I can understand why Israel would want to do something like that.”
“What convinced Trump to do this? What was the underlying motivation? And sometimes it’s hard to listen to press conferences to figure that out.”
“If the goal of eliminating Iran as a nuclear power is achieved, the world will have done a great good, even if there are quite large costs in the short term; there are also large costs in the short term, but we should never have allowed ourselves to be so vulnerable to those costs.”
