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Kemi Badenoch has accused Labour of 'playing student politics' while 'the rest of the world rearms' as Sir Keir Starmer 'sits on the fence'.
In a fresh attack on the government's response to the Iran war, the Conservative leader said that Labour is 'nothing like the patriotic party of yesteryear' and that Sir Keir was just a 'political hostage'.
Ms Badenoch, who has repeatedly called on the government to authorise RAF offensive strikes on Iran's missile launch sites, suggested the Prime Minister was 'too scared of upsetting certain sections of Labour's target voters to 'act in the national interest'.
'He is held at the behest of a load of half-rate left-wing MPs, none of whom grasp the seriousness of the world that Britain is now in,' she told the Conservative Spring Conference today.
Continuing her fierce criticism of what she sees as Labour's procrastination and failure to support the US, she said: 'I never thought I would see the day when Britain's allies felt that they could not rely on us.
'This week, they have described us as weak. They've accused us of deserting them, of going missing in action.'
Kemi Badenoch has accused Labour of 'playing student politics' while 'the rest of the world rearms' as Sir Keir Starmer' sits on the fence'
Video footage appears to show the moment an Iranian drone struck Dubai airport today
She told delegates in Harrogate this morning that the US 'have watched Britain refusing to send reinforcements to defend our military bases in the Mediterranean' and will lash out at Labour's failure to prepare the military for action.
'The US, Greece and France have all sent ships. Ours is stuck in Portsmouth Harbour, apparently because of a union dispute,' Ms Badenoch said, in reference to the furore over air defence destroyer HMS Dragon.
It emerged this week that the key military asset - which can shoot down drones and missiles - was stuck in port at Portsmouth instead of on its way to help protect the British base and service personnel at RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus, which was hit by a drone last week.
The warship is not expected to sail until next week and could take days to get to the eastern Mediterranean.
Today it emerged aircraft carrier HMS Prince of Wales is being readied ahead of a possible deployment to the Middle East.
Painting a picture of a dithering and cowardly Prime Minister who cannot make his mind up what to do, she told the conference: 'Everyone remembers the mistakes of the Iraq war. Nobody is suggesting we should drop bombs without a second thought.
'But Keir Starmer spent days consulting lawyers and plucking up the courage to say whose side he was on, even though our allies had the moral clarity to do so immediately and unequivocally.
'Even now, he is sitting on the fence, still deciding what our role is going to be in this war. We are in this war whether Keir Starmer likes it or not. It's time to act.'
Her speech came after sustained criticism from US President Donald Trump over Britain's failure to give its supposedly key ally immediate and wholehearted support and allow initial US strikes on Iran from UK bases.
Sir Keir suggested any decision to do so would have been unlawful and called for a 'viable, thought-through plan'.
He has now latterly granted permission for the US to use RAF Fairford in Gloucestershire, its only European base, to launch 'defensive' raids only on ballistic missile storage sites in Iran.
Supersonic B1 Lancer bombers, described by military experts as 'one of the most significant bombers in the world' for its size and capability, arrived at the UK base on Friday and Saturday and are expected to be primed for imminent raids on Iran.
Yesterday, Ms Badenoch told the BBC the RAF needed to do more than just shoot down missiles and drones fired by Iran at allies in the Gulf.
'They need to do more than that. They need to stop the missile sites. You need to go to the source.
'If you have someone with a gun shooting, stopping the bullets is not enough, you need to go after the weapon,' she said.
'You can't always wait for people to attack you. Sometimes you have to make sure that you get there first to stop their ability to hurt your citizens.'
Foreign Secretary David Lammy also said yesterday that there was a legal basis to allow RAF jets to strike Iranian missile sites.
In her speech today, Ms Badenoch also taunted the government for its performance domestically and its safe seat loss to the Greens in Gorton and Denton, claiming it had 'spooked' the party.
'They watched the Greens campaigning on sectarian voting lines, a tactic Labour used for many years turned against them,' she said.
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