Rosa Prince, Columnist

Britain Now Has Someone Else to Blame for Its Misery

March 18, 2026 at 5:00 AM UTC

Rosa Prince is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering UK politics and policy. She was formerly an editor and writer at Politico and the Daily Telegraph, and is the author of "Comrade Corbyn" and "Theresa May: The Enigmatic Prime Minister."

Former friends.
Photographer: Leon Neal/Getty Images Europe

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There was a brief moment when a path seemed to open for British Prime Minister Keir Starmer to salvage a beleaguered premiership. The emergence of a few tentative economic green shoots offered the glimmer of hope that this Labour government wouldn’t go down in history as a failure.

Donald Trump’s Iran folly has ended that dream. With the “Trumpflation” impact of rising energy prices about to hit UK consumers hard, Starmer’s only remaining option is to blame the US president’s war of choice for the bad times to come. He’d be foolish not to.