Miliband says Iran conflict is one of biggest contributors to UK cost of living

Mason says two questions about a weakened Trump will shape world affairs

Before the votes in America were counted, Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband spoke to BBC Newscast. BBC News political editor Chris Mason asked him specifically whether he feared a domestically humiliated President Trump may prove more belligerent internationally. Miliband did not offer a direct answer to the question and referred instead to the Iran war.

“I know that one of the biggest responsibilities of the whole government, frankly, is the cost of living situation at home, and we know one of the biggest contributors to the cost of living situation is, frankly, the conflict,” Miliband said. “The Strait of Hormuz being not exactly closed, but not properly open, not free flowing, and that is hitting families at home,” he said.

“We know that we need a diplomatic way out of this conflict, and so that is one of the things that we’re working on. It’s something I talked to the U.S. Secretary of State about at the G20, and it’s something we continue to work on,” he added. The foreign secretary met Marco Rubio at the meeting in Atlanta last week.

Mason reported that within government the Iran war and its consequences, particularly on energy prices, are widely seen as the biggest individual contributor among the many factors currently driving up the cost of living. He wrote that the issue puts many, including many of America’s allies, in alignment with many in America, Democrat and Republican, who when asked why the elections went as they did point at the prices displayed outside any petrol station.

Mason wrote that it is noticeable the British government’s public reaction is grounded too in the consequences of the war with Iran: the cost of living. In the first public words from the prime minister after the American midterm elections, Andy Burnham said, “Well, President Trump has accepted the results.” Mason observed that Trump accepting a result in his own country is not an observation British leaders have frequently had to make about recent American presidents, and that what would previously have been taken for granted no longer can be. Burnham then said, “I feel the world has an opportunity now to unite around the issue that is affecting us all and that’s the cost of living.” He added, “But I can’t get people’s cost of living pressures down until the conflict in the Middle East is resolved, the conflict between in Ukraine started by Russia.”

Mason reported that Burnham’s relationship with Trump remains in its early stages — so far it has amounted to a handful of phone calls and one face-to-face meeting at the United Nations in New York in September. As Burnham continues to attempt to build a rapport with Trump, Mason wrote, the prime minister will be doing so with a president in a wildly different political situation than when Sir Keir Starmer was trying to build bridges with him.

Mason wrote that Trump’s position is no longer a story of an extraordinary comeback, but that of a midterm president seemingly punished for the consequences of a foreign war of the type Trump had originally promised to avoid.

Mason posed two open questions for the British government and so many others: Does defeat at home make it more likely that Trump gets angrier abroad? Or do America’s traditional allies — the UK, the European Union, Canada, Australia and others — feel more strident and willing to work with Trump’s domestic political opponents to try to challenge and restrain a weakened president? The answers to those two questions, Mason said, will determine much in world affairs in the next couple of years.