Raab fails to reassure over Afghanistan

Dominic Raab’s speech closing the Commons debate on Afghanistan provided a neat summary of the government’s response to the crisis: defensive, sketchy on detail and irritated by valid criticism. The Foreign Secretary’s name had cropped up repeatedly today in the chamber as opposition MPs slammed his decision to stay on holiday as the Taliban surged back through Afghanistan. He did not address this directly (naturally) but instead paid tribute to the many speeches he had heard from across the House. None of them, as Lisa Nandy had just observed in her winding-up speech, was devoid of criticism for this government. Many were in fact full of it.

Raab was cut off by the Speaker as he had run over time. Perhaps that is why he didn’t get to mentioning the speech of Tom Tugendhat, praised on this blog and elsewhere.