The unspeakable truth is that we lost in Iraq. We must not lose in Afghanistan too

James Forsyth reviews the week in politics

Britain has fought more wars than any other country, but rarely has it suffered two defeats in a row. That humiliation is what this country is currently drifting towards, following failure in Iraq with failure in Afghanistan.

Westminster might be obsessing over the Iraq inquiry’s revelations about how the decision to go to war was made, but the really important part of the inquiry’s work will come when it turns its attention to what happened after the invasion. The painful truth about Iraq, which no politician dares speak, is that Britain was defeated. As David Kilcullen, a Nato counter-insurgency expert whom both Gordon Brown and David Miliband have lavished praise on, has said: ‘In 2006 the British army was defeated in the field in southern Iraq.’ The principal job of the Iraq inquiry should be determining why this happened; everything else can be thrown to the historians.