By Allistair Lomax
Despite the protestations from Government ministers, there is little doubt that the UK has been ‘dragged’ into the US/Israel war against Iran. What we see is the mainstream media fulfilling its role as government stenographers by pushing the narrative that Keir Starmer has resisted pressure from Donald Trump to join the war against Iran and that the UK bases are only used for ‘defensive’ operations by the US.
The mainstream media has been deployed to convince the British public that Keir Starmer is, somehow, ‘on the right side of history’.
This is how our media is used to push government propaganda: they are an instrument of government policy rather than a way of forcing the government to account for its duplicity. Their role is to walk lockstep with government policy.
I believe that our journalists should confront the Labour government with these five questions:
- What is the verification process for deciding whether a US target in Iran is ‘defensive’ or ‘offensive’?
- Who in the UK government signs off that decision?
- How many US requests for targets in Iran have been rejected by the UK government?
- Is the list of targets attacked by the US shared with the UK, retrospectively?
- Are the numbers of civilian casualties being monitored and reported?
These are the questions that our journalists should be asking the government, if they were worthy of the name. We deserve the truth.