Should we really be airlifting pets out of Kabul?

You could say that there’s something terribly British about the way that people are, in the grim situation in Afghanistan, rallying around 140 dogs and 60 cats. The animals are inmates of the charity Nozad, run by a former Afghan veteran Pen Farthing. Plus 68 of its human employees. Or you could say that there’s something worryingly typical of this administration in the way this affair has been handled. 

The Ark Project, as the evacuation exercise has been named, has managed to secure permission for its specially chartered, privately funded aircraft to leave Kabul airport if the humans and their dumb chums manage to make it there. Other cleared refugees would occupy the remaining spaces, with the pets in the hold. British forces will seek permission from the Americans running the airport to allow the plane to leave. So, it’s a victory for Mr Farthing and a climbdown from the Defence Secretary, Ben Wallace, who’d been reluctant to be seen to be prioritising animal refugees when humans were having to run enormous risks to circumvent the Taliban to get into the airport and onto military flights.

But the way the whole thing has been handled is, in one respect, characteristic of the Johnson court.