One of the strangest and most dramatic parliamentary terms ended today in bizarre fashion. The fiasco over fiddled expenses has preoccupied Westminster for months but it was helicopters in Afghanistan that dominated PMQs. From whoppers to choppers.
The Speaker seems to have ruled against public lamentations over battlefield casualties and, without these solemnities, our MPs had more time to ask questions and the PM had more time to avoid answering them.
David Cameron said the Afghan mission needed, ‘a tighter definition, greater urgency and more visible progress,’ in order to maintain public support. Brown’s definition was looser rather than tighter. ‘To prevent terrorism coming to the streets of Britain, to build up Afghan forces, to give the Afghans a stake in their own future,’ and, oddly enough, ‘to protect the schools and hospitals denied to them by the activity of the Taleban’.
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