A former British Army officer has accused the Prime Minister of being “beholden to Islamists” in his decision to initially block the US from using UK airbases to strike Iran. Richard Kemp suggested that Sir Keir Starmer was hesitant to green-light President Donald Trump‘s use of bases in Gloucestershire and the Indian Ocean after losing the Gorton and Denton by-election to the “hard-left” Green Party. The ex-general told The Winston Marshall show: “This Government is absolutely beholden to [the Islamist] part of the British electorate. We saw [how] the hard left, in this case the Green Party, turned against them and basically harnessed the anti-Israel cause in order to win that by-election.

“Prime Minister Starmer and his government divisions and ministers are hiding behind international law because they don’t want to be seen to justify this conflict … because it would be seen by Islamists and hard-left Labour supporters as being an attack on a Muslim state.” Sir Keir attributed his resistance to Mr Trump’s use of UK bases to concerns that the opening assault on Iran may have been unlawful and lacked a “viable, thought-through plan”.

He told MPs “the whole country is worried about the potential for escalation” in the Middle East and “we need to act, therefore, with clarity, with purpose and with a cool head”.

In response to Tehran’s retaliatory actions, the Prime Minister gave the US permission to use British bases for the limited purpose of attacking missile launchers and infrastructure, but RAF jets have not been involved in striking Iran.

He said: “What I was not prepared to do on Saturday was for the UK to join a war unless I was satisfied there was a lawful basis and a viable, thought-through plan. That remains my position.”

The Middle Eastern conflict between Iran, the US and Israel entered its sixth day on Thursday, after the latter two countries targeted Tehran’s leadership military arsenal and nuclear programme over the weekend.

It has so far killed over 1,000 people in Iran, more than 70 in Lebanon and around a dozen in Israel, according to reports from those countries.

It has also disrupted global oil and gas supplies and stranded thousands of travellers in the Gulf region.

The war has so far shown no signs of abating, with Iran warning that the US would “bitterly regret” torpedoing one of its warships in the Indian Ocean on Tuesday.

Iranian foreign minister Abbas Araghchi decried the sinking, which killed at least 87 sailors, as an “atrocity at sea”, while religious leader Ayatollah Abdollah Javadi Amoli called for “the shedding of Zionist blood [and] the shedding of Trump’s blood” on state television this week.