Afghanistan

Lord Strasburger Excerpts

Wednesday 18th August 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Strasburger (LD) [V]]

My Lords, I shall not repeat the many calls for urgent humanitarian action articulated by most of the previous 99 speakers around the House, which of course I support. In the short time available, I will focus instead on one issue—why? Why has the manner of our withdrawal been such a shameful shambles? Why is our nation’s previous reputation for integrity and reliability now shot to pieces? Why is nobody likely to trust the word of the United Kingdom any more, whether they be a war zone interpreter or world leader?

The answer comes down to leadership, or lack of it. What qualities do good leaders have? As well as integrity, vision and values, there is a key one: being able to spot threats and make hard decisions to mitigate them promptly while there is still time to affect the outcome. Throughout last week, it was abundantly obvious to anyone who followed the news that the Afghan army had collapsed, that the Taliban were advancing rapidly and unopposed, and that the forecasts of how long Kabul could hold out were wildly optimistic. That should have triggered emergency action by our Government but there was none.

The Foreign Secretary has pleaded that nobody could have predicted this. He should have said, “Boris and Dominic didn’t spot what everybody else could see.” It was a huge opportunity squandered. That lost week was crucial for rescuing British nationals, the interpreters and other supporters of our mission and their families, as well as Afghan women and girls, who rightly fear for their future under a Taliban regime. Instead, the Government belatedly sprang into action when the Taliban were already surrounding the airport and only a few of those needing to escape can now do so—a classic case of shutting the stable door.

However, we should not be surprised. The Prime Minister has plenty of form on procrastinating until it is too late, presumably while he establishes which option will do the least damage to his popularity rating. In the Brexit trade negotiations, he frequently postponed the difficult decisions about the Irish border, repeatedly kicking the can down the road, and, as a result, in a last-minute stitch-up, we are saddled with an unworkable protocol that he himself now repudiates.

In spring last year, he dithered for weeks over calling the first lockdown and, in the autumn, over blocking travel from India to prevent the new variant taking hold. The result in both cases was an increase of many thousands in the number of Britons who became ill and died. That fatal indecisiveness is not new and is part of a pattern. The sad fact is that we have a Prime Minister who is temperamentally incapable of acting until after the chance to make a difference has gone. That is why we have this latest disaster. That is not leadership but a leadership vacuum, and it is costing our country dearly. While that situation persists, our country’s future is precarious and, sadly, more humiliation is on the way.