MPs of all parties raged at the UK’s “weakness” and “shame” after the sudden Taliban takeover of Afghanistan, leaving Boris Johnson isolated in an emergency Commons debate.
The prime minister came under fire for an intelligence failure that led to the chaotic retreat from Kabul and for “hoping on a wing and prayer it would be all right”, as Theresa May put it.
His predecessor in No 10 was among Tories who questioned the future of a Nato alliance “dependent” on an increasingly isolationist United States – after Joe Biden pulled the plug on the Afghan mission.
There was also fierce criticism of the low number of Afghans to be offered sanctuary in the UK – just 5,000 in the next 12 months – and of Mr Johnson and Dominic Raab, the foreign secretary, for heading off on holiday as the crisis loomed.
Strikingly, Tory MPs failed to rally behind Mr Johnson with verbal support, in a Commons packed for the first time since the Covid pandemic broke out 17 months ago.
Liam Fox, a former defence secretary, was among those who warned: “The strategic weakness of our alliance will have been noted not just in Kabul, but in Moscow, and in Beijing, and in Tehran and in Islamabad.”
Tom Tugendhat – who served as an Army officer in Afghanistan – demanded a strategy “for reinvigorating our European Nato partners, to make sure that we are not dependent on a single ally”.
“This doesn’t need to be defeat, but at the moment it damn well feels like it,” he said, drawing rare applause from some fellow MPs.
Labour’s Chris Bryant said he felt “more ashamed than I can remember”, warning: “We have managed to humiliate ourselves.
“We have shamed our politics and our way of doing business. We have trailed the British flag and our own honour in the dirt and in the mud.”
And, in Mr Johnson’s most uncomfortable moment, Mrs May asked him: “What does it say about Nato if we are entirely dependent on a unilateral decision taken by the United States?”
“I do find it incomprehensible and worrying that the United Kingdom was not able to bring together, not a military solution, but an alternative alliance with countries to continue to provide the support necessary to sustain a government in Afghanistan.”
The former prime minister demanded to know: “Was our intelligence really so poor? Was our understanding of the Afghan Government so weak? Was our knowledge of the position on the ground so inadequate?
“Did we just feel that we had to follow the United States and hope that, on a wing and a prayer, it would be all right on the night?”
The government has insisted it tried, unsuccessfully, to put together an alliance to maintain some operations in Afghanistan, but declined to provide any details.
Asked when he had spoken with Jens Stoltenberg, the Nato secretary-general, Mr Johnson replied “the other day”.
The prime minister again fought off calls for an independent inquiry into the Afghan war, claiming: “Most of the key questions have already been gone into.”
And he urged MPs to recognise that deploying “tens of thousands” of British troops to Afghanistan to continue fighting the Taliban would not enjoy public support.
“The West could not continue this US-led mission, a mission conceived and executed in support of America, without American logistics, without US air power and without American might,” Mr Johnson insisted.
“I really think that it is an illusion to believe that there is appetite among any of our partners for a continued military presence or for a military solution imposed by Nato in Afghanistan. That idea ended with the combat mission in 2014.”
