Boris Johnson faces widespread condemnation of Afghanistan 'blunder' and 'failure'

Boris Johnson and Dominic Raab faced widespread condemnation of their “strategic blunder” in Afghanistan yesterday, with Yorkshire MPs among those slamming the “catastrophic failure” of their response to the crisis.

Representatives on both sides of the House - called back to Parliament from their long summer break - lined up to criticise the Government’s approach, including former Prime Minister Theresa May who accused them of hoping on “a wing and a prayer it’d be alright on the night” in not believing the Taliban capable of a takeover.

The Prime Minister faced multiple critical interventions from his own green benches, and there were cries of disbelief from across the House of Commons - packed for the first time in more than a year - when he denied that the Government had been unprepared for the Taliban’s rapid advancement, although he did admit “the collapse has been faster than even the Taliban themselves predicated.”

His predecessor Mrs May called the crisis a “major setback for British foreign policy” and grilled the front bench on whether they actually believed the Taliban were incapable of taking over.

“Was our intelligence really so poor?” she asked. “Was our understanding of the Afghan government so weak? Was our knowledge of the position on the ground so inadequate? Or did we really believe this? Or did we feel we just had to follow the United States and hope that on a wing and a prayer it’d be alright on the night?”

Barnsley Central MP and Afghanistan veteran Dan Jarvis stood to speak of his fear for Afghan colleagues who fought alongside him, telling Commons colleagues: “We tried to give the Afghans a different life, one of hope and one of opportunity, but the catastrophic failure of international political leadership and the brutality of the Taliban has snatched all of that away from them.”

Fellow former Army officer and chair of the defence select committee Tobias Ellwood also described his “utter disbelief seeing us make such an operational and strategic blunder by retreating at this time”

Meanwhile, the evacuation of British nationals from Afghanistan is continuing following the Taliban’s toppling of the capital Kabul over the weekend, with Number 10 telling reporters that the aim is to remove around 1,000 people per day.

Mr Johnson’s official spokesman said that the embassy in the country has “effectively relocated to the airport” in Kabul and that while 1,000 is “the number we’re aiming to operate on a daily basis, he warned against “putting a hard figure on it given the situation on the ground.”

Meanwhile, the British public is split on whether withdrawing troops from the country was the correct thing to do.

Pollsters Ipsos Mori found that 39 per cent of adults said pulling troops out was the right thing to do, while 40 per cent think it was the wrong decision.

The survey of 1,970 people also found that 19% of those polled said Britain should not intervene at all over the next few months if the Taliban regime commits widespread human rights abuses or allows extremist groups to operate.