When will Britain protect its citizens?

There was a time that Britain prided itself on protecting its citizens — whatever their religion — wherever they were in the world. Now the government is reluctant to defend them from foreign aggression even on its own soil.

In the past fortnight alone, terrorists have targeted British citizens and property on UK territory at least four times. Yesterday was just the latest. Two Jewish people in Golders Green, North London, were stabbed. This follows on from last week, when two synagogues and one Jewish-owned business were firebombed, thankfully with no loss of life.

The previous month, ambulances belonging to a Jewish charity were set ablaze in suburban London. Attacks against the Jewish community are clearly escalating.

A previously unknown group called Harakat Ashab al-Yamin al-Islamia (HAYI) has claimed responsibility for all these attacks, as well as several similar assaults against Jews and Jewish buildings across continental Europe.

This terrorist group emerged seemingly out of nowhere at the start of the full-scale U.S.-Israeli conflict with Iran in March. The UK police are now investigating their links to Tehran. If confirmed, these are just the latest in a campaign of terror orchestrated by the Islamic Republic across the UK against Jews and Iranian dissidents alike.

The regime is already responsible for more than “20 potentially lethal attacks on UK soil” in the last year alone, according to British Prime Minister Keir Starmer. Yet Starmer has also repeatedly made clear that “this is not our war” and Britain will not be “dragged” into it.

This is all far removed from the heyday of British power. Back in 1850, Starmer’s predecessor, Lord Palmerston, delivered a famous speech on what protection British citizens could expect from their government.

“As the Roman, in days of old, held himself free from indignity, when he could say Civis Romanus sum” (I am a Roman citizen),” Palmerston declared, “so also a British subject, in whatever land he may be, shall feel confident that the watchful eye and the strong arm of England, will protect him against injustice and wrong.”

What made Palmerston’s statement all the more remarkable is the incident that caused it. Don Pacifico, a Jewish man born in the British territory of Gibraltar, had claimed the help of Palmerston’s government after antisemitic rioters in Greece torched his property.

When the Greek government refused Pacifico’s compensation demands, Palmerston sent the Royal Navy to blockade Greek ports and demand recompense for this British subject.

Palmerston, of course, had far weightier strategic objectives in mind than simply aiding this Jewish merchant of Portuguese descent. He was eager to demonstrate British supremacy in the eastern Mediterranean. He also wanted to send a clear message to other autocratic powers across Europe that Britain would zealously defend its interests and its ideals against all comers if necessary.

This was just one of a series of high-handed interventions that Palmerston engaged in, from China during the 1839-1842 Opium War to the suppression of the international slave trade on the high seas. Foreign governments and domestic critics decried Palmerston’s gunboat diplomacy against Greece as just his latest instance of illegal warmongering.

Yet as Palmerston reminded his critics: “It rarely if ever happens that a foreign government gives up its selfish interests, its passions or prejudices to the force of argument or persuasion.” Indeed, when faced with a government that “is deaf and blind to reason and right,” diplomacy “seldom succeeds unless there is compulsion of some sort behind it.”

Today, British citizens are again assailed by a regime that seems impervious to “reason and right,” and is motivated by the most ancient of prejudices. This time, however, it is happening not abroad but here at home.

Starmer’s response to these attacks on Britain’s citizens on British soil is effectively to refuse to recognize them as acts of war. He has ruled out responding belligerently or allowing the United States to use British bases for offensive purposes against the regime. Instead, the Foreign Office simply summoned Iran’s ambassador for an explanation after two of its agents were charged with spying and planning attacks on Jewish targets across Britain.

Unlike the U.S. and a growing number of countries across Europe, London has still not proscribed the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), the regime’s primary projector of terror. Starmer’s government has justified this on the grounds that current terrorism laws are not “appropriate for a foreign state organization.”

At the very least, Britain should immediately outlaw the IRGC. London could also allow U.S. forces greater leeway in using British bases to combat Tehran. Downing Street might not like how the U.S.-Israel war with Iran arose. But Britain and its citizens clearly have an interest in its success.

Yet even as Tehran steps up its offenses in Britain, Starmer has continued to call for diplomacy and de-escalation, with next to no compulsion behind it.

It is certainly clear to Britain’s enemies that this is not Lord Palmerston that they are dealing with. And, sadly, British citizens will continue to pay the price.

Charlie Laderman is an adjunct fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD). For more analysis from Charlie and FDD, please subscribe HERE. Follow FDD on X @FDD. Follow Charlie on X @CharlieLaderman. FDD is a Washington, DC-based, nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.