Keir Starmer and David Lammy’s lack of competence on foreign policy has been exposed over the Chagos giveaway – currently being slammed by all sides in the Commons. Labour insiders are now raising the alarm about other brewing global controversies they foresee coming down the track. One issue is elections due in Kurdistan at the end of the month. Starmer and Lammy would ordinarily be expected to take a balanced position, in favour of UK interests…

Weirdly, though, a party in the region which has been described as having ‘strong ties to the Iranian government’ has an unusually close relationship with Starmer’s Labour. Bafel Jalal Talabani – reportedly a UK citizen – is challenging the incumbent Kurdish administration. His office praised Starmer on his election: “Congratulations to PM Keir Starmer, the newly elected Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. I also would like to congratulate the Labour Party on the victory in this election.” Multiple Labour and security sources say PUK officials are in regular contact with Labour officials, and attendees with PUK connections were spotted at the party’s annual conference in Liverpool…

The PUK has some questionable links. Just last month the party welcomed Masoud Pezeshkian, the Iranian President, on a visit to Kurdistan. BBC Monitoring submitted evidence to Parliament: ‘The PUK is open about its own strong ties to the Iranian government’. And the PUK mourned the death of Hezbollah terrorist leader Hassan Nasrallah last month, with a post referring to it as a ‘martyrdom’ (Hezbollah is a proscribed organisation in the UK). Is this the next Labour foreign policy scandal about to blow up?