THE tens of thousands who marched against war with Iran on Saturday speak for the huge majority of the British public.

That is clear from every opinion poll. It was clear on the BBC’s politics show Question Time, where presenter Fiona Bruce, asking for a show of hands from those who thought Britain should get involved in Donald Trump’s war, had to concede it was “not many… a handful.”

Once again, though, a yawning gulf separates the public from the delusions of the Westminster set.

The Trump sycophants of the hard right, from Nigel Farage to Kemi Badenoch, berate the government for not throwing itself into this illegal war of aggression. The extremist mass media rolls out its usual propaganda, claiming peace marchers are apologists for theocracy or Islamist sleepers threatening our national security. Yet it is the warmongers who threaten British lives and living standards.

Unfortunately these bloodlusting loons will get their way unless we can mount a serious political revolt against Keir Starmer.

The government is drifting into war with Iran, a policy less creditable even than the war hawks’ since it tries to disguise the decision to wage war through a series of supposedly defensive escalations.

First, our planes were in the air “defending our people, our allies and our interests”: that is, assisting the US and Israel’s unprovoked attack on Iran by helping shoot down retaliatory missiles and drones aimed at US bases in the region. Next, we say the US can use our bases to strike Iran, making us complicit in the attack. Now we are despatching more warships to the Gulf, supposedly to engage in more such “defensive” operations.

Rudderless and unprincipled, Britain bobs along in the wake of a crazed US regime which is bulldozing the architecture of international law and the entire postwar system.

The shadow of fascism we see in the Trump administration’s brutal domestic record — especially the lethal violence inflicted on US cities by the Ice agency — looms in its foreign policy too.

We know that Marco Rubio at the Munich Security Conference cited the end of the second world war as the moment European greatness died and its “vast empires” began their retreat before “godless communist revolutions and anti-colonial uprisings.”

We know that Trump has resumed the open celebration of conflict characteristic of fascism, renaming the Defence Secretary the Secretary of War; and that that Secretary of War Pete Hegseth says openly and repeatedly that the US no longer cares about the legality of its conduct.

This year, so far, has been one of uninterrupted US aggression on multiple fronts. And if Donald Trump is not stopped, that aggression will keep escalating until we are faced with world war between nuclear powers.

Ignore the ranting Islamophobes of the right: it is not the anti-war left repeating Neville Chamberlain’s policy of appeasement. Trump’s United States is the rampaging power threatening world peace. The appeasers are those who won’t stand up to him.

So it is important to be clear. Victory for the US and Israel in Iran would be far more dangerous for the world than any other outcome in this war.

That is nothing to do with sympathising with the Iranian state or political system. It is simply acknowledging the reality that if Trump wins he is going to start more and bigger wars: and this one is already engulfing much of the Middle East.

So we must challenge the despatch of British ships to the Gulf, the use of British bases to attack Iran and any engagement of British forces in this war. We are assisting a calamitous project that threatens the whole world.

The public are with us; some MPs, though not enough, are speaking out. But it will take a political revolution to detach Britain from the US war machine. That should now be a priority task for everyone on the left.