In a few weeks time, a slew of foreign ministers will descend on London to attend a conference on Afghanistan. No.10 will use the event to sell Gordon Brown as a statesman, confidently dealing with the nation’s threats. The Conservatives, in turn, will probably try to score the usual points about Britain’s failure, alongside its NATO allies, to make any in-roads in the fight against the Taliban. Together with Tony Blair’s evidence to the Iraq Inquiry, the conference may create one of the few moments in the drawn-out election campaign when the three party leaders stop talking about the NHS and focus on national security issues instead.
Too bad, then, that the conference will be a waste of time and should be cancelled forthwith – not least to save the taxpayers the million pound sum the event will cost. Dreamt up by Gordon Brown and Angela Merkel, the event was meant to represent a moment of post-election reckoning, a time when the international community held President Karzai to a number of benchmarks – on anti-corruption, development, security hand-over etc.
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