The Red Line You Forgot to Draw

There is something faintly irritating about watching governments discover their strategy halfway through a crisis. It gives the impression of a driver who insists he knows exactly where he is going while repeatedly stopping to ask for directions.

With the benefit of hindsight, and I freely admit that, the problem with the government’s messaging over the use of British bases was not the underlying policy. The problem was that the conditions were never stated clearly at the start. On day one the message seemed fairly clear: Britain was not allowing its bases to be used for the operation. Then British assets were attacked and the position shifted rather quickly.

At that point the government found itself explaining that supporting defensive action was entirely different from participating in offensive operations. Which is technically true in legal terms, but rather less convincing in practical terms. Missiles launched from a base do not pause at the runway to check whether their paperwork describes them as offensive or defensive.

What should have been said from the outset was something far more straightforward. Britain will not permit its bases to be used for offensive action in this conflict. However, if British forces, territory or assets are attacked, that changes the situation and we will support defensive operations. That is not escalation. That is deterrence.

The clever part of that wording is that it quietly builds in the legal justification from day one. Under international law, the right of self defence only arises once an attack has occurred. So if the condition is clearly stated in advance, any later response sits neatly within that framework. The legal argument, the deterrent signal and the political narrative are all aligned before events begin to move.

States do this all the time. Alliances are built on exactly this sort of conditional commitment. An attack on one member triggers a response from others. The purpose of stating the condition in advance is not merely to justify retaliation afterwards. It is to make the red line visible so that everyone understands the consequences before they stumble over it.

By not spelling out the condition early, the government ended up looking as if it was making things up as it went along. First a refusal. Then an attack. Then a revised position. Even if the underlying policy never actually changed, the public narrative quickly settled on hesitation followed by a reluctant reversal.

This is really the difference between strategic communication and tactical messaging. Tactical messaging reacts to events as they happen. Strategic communication sets out the logic of the response before events force your hand, so that when something does happen everyone already knows what follows. One looks deliberate. The other looks weak, and almost invites criticism because it appears that the government is being pushed into its own decisions.

None of this is especially mysterious. If someone attacks your forces, you respond. That is the oldest rule in statecraft. The clever part is making sure everyone understands that rule in advance so that the attack never happens in the first place.

Instead we were treated to the diplomatic equivalent of announcing the rules of the game after the first foul has already been committed. It works, eventually. But it rarely looks particularly convincing.

Starmer was right, but at the wrong time.