Raab admits British nationals still in Afghanistan face ‘challenge’ to find route out of country

Published

3 years ago

August 31, 2021

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Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab has admitted it will be a “challenge” for British nationals left in Afghanistan to now find a route to the UK.

Speaking to Sky News, Mr Raab said the number of British nationals who had not been taken as part of the now-ended UK evacuation effort was in the “low hundreds”.

Acknowledging it was “unclear” when the airport in Afghanistan‘s capital Kabul would again be operating – following this weekend’s pullout of US and UK troops – Mr Raab advised those still seeking to leave the country they could find a route to the UK via neighbouring countries.

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The foreign secretary said, since April, more than 17,000 British nationals, Afghans who worked with the UK, and other vulnerable people had been evacuated from the country.

But, of those UK nationals who were still left in Afghanistan, Mr Raab admitted there were “low hundreds” remaining in the country.

“Most of those are difficult cases where it’s not clear around eligibility because they’re undocumented,” he said.

“We’ve now put in place the arrangements with third countries, or we’re putting them in place.

“I’ve spoken to some of the key third countries, so have other ministers, to make sure we can have a workable route through for those outstanding cases.”

Asked whether his advice for those UK nationals still in Afghanistan would be for them to head across one of the country’s borders, Mr Raab added: “It depends if they are eligible or not and, of course, we’re in contact with them to be able to establish that.

“That’s made more difficult because we don’t have the base at the airport.

“Certainly if they’re eligible British nationals, there are embassies in those third countries – whether it’s Pakistan or one of the stans.”

Pressed on how British nationals in Afghanistan might reach one of Afghanistan’s borders, now the country is under Taliban control, Mr Raab admitted it would be a “challenge”.

But the foreign secretary said the UK would hold the Taliban to their “explicit assurances” – as well as the terms of a UN Security Council resolution passed on Monday – that they “must allow safe passage not just for our nationals but other Afghans, particularly vulnerable ones, who wish to leave”.

The Taliban are now in control of Kabul’s airport following the final withdrawal of Western troops in recent days. And Mr Raab said there was “a degree of scepticism” about the group’s “capacity to run that airport safely”.

“We know that some countries are trying to help them with that effectively functional capacity,” he said.

“Of course the previous government had air traffic controllers and things like that. But at what stage that will be ready and viable for international travel, at this point, is unclear.”

He added: “What support they get and how quickly they can then salvage a functional operational capacity remains to be seen.

“Which is why we’re making sure – working with those third countries, working with our embassies – that, actually, if people can get to the border, we can process those cases.”

Mr Raab also rejected claims that a UK request may have contributed to the risk of a terror attack at Kabul airport.

According to the Politico website, the US decided to keep Abbey Gate at Kabul airport open longer in order to allow the UK to continue evacuating British personnel.

The gate was subsequently the location of a suicide bomb attack for which ISIS-K, an offshoot of Islamic State, have been held responsible.

But Mr Raab said it was “just not true” that the UK was “pushing to leave the gate open”.

“We coordinate very closely with the US, in particular around the ISIS-K threat that we anticipated – although tragically were not able to prevent,” he told Sky News.

“It is certainly right to say we got our civilian staff out of the processing centre by Abbey Gate.

“But it is just not true to suggest, other than securing our civilian staff inside the airport, that we were pushing to leave the gate open.

“In fact, and let me just be clear about this, we were issuing changes of travel advice before the bomb attack took place and saying to people in the crowd, about which I was particularly concerned, that certainly UK nationals and anyone else should leave because of the risk.”

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Robert Jenrick or Kemi Badenoch to be crowned Tory leader today – but whoever wins contest faces daunting task

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November 2, 2024

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Robert Jenrick or Kemi Badenoch to be crowned Tory leader today - but whoever wins contest faces daunting task

The next leader of the Conservative party will be announced today, following a run-off between Kemi Badenoch and Robert Jenrick.

The winner will replace Rishi Sunak as the leader of the opposition, after he led the party to a crushing election defeat in July, losing almost two thirds of its MPs.

His successor faces the daunting task of rebuilding the Tory party after years of division, scandal and economic turbulence, which saw Labour eject them from power by a landslide.

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Voting by tens of thousands of party members, who need to have joined at least 90 days ago, closed on Thursday. Both candidates have claimed the result will be close.

The Conservatives do not disclose how many members the party has, but the figure was about 172,000 in 2022, and research suggests they are disproportionately affluent, older white men.

Both candidates are seen as on the party’s right wing. Kemi Badenoch, 44, is the former trade secretary, who was born in London to middle-class Nigerian parents but spent most of her childhood in Lagos.

After moving back to the UK aged 16, she stayed with a family friend while taking her A-levels, and has spoken of her time working at McDonald’s as a teenager.

Having studied computer science at Sussex University, she then worked as a software engineer before entering London politics and becoming MP for Saffron Walden in Essex in 2017.

Ms Badenoch prides herself on being outspoken and has said the Conservatives lost because they “talked right and governed left”. But her critics paint her as abrasive and prone to misspeaking.

At the Conservative Party conference, a crucial staging post in the contest, she began her speech which followed three other male candidates by saying: “Nice speeches, boys, but I think you all know I’m the one everyone’s been waiting for.”

Her rival Robert Jenrick, 42, has been on a political journey. Elected as a Cameroon Conservative in 2014, he was one of the rising star ministers who swung behind Boris Johnson as prime minister and was later a vocal supporter of Rishi Sunak.

But he resigned as immigration minister in December 2023, claiming Sunak’s government was breaking its promises to cut immigration.

The MP for Newark in Nottinghamshire says he had a “working-class” upbringing in Wolverhampton. He read history at Cambridge University and worked at Christie’s auctioneers before winning a by-election.

After a long ministerial career where he was seen as mild-mannered, he is said to have been “radicalised” by his time at the Home Office and has focused his campaign on a promise to slash immigration and leave the European Convention on Human Rights to “stand for our nation and our culture, our identity and our way of life”.

He has put forward more policies than his rival, but attracted criticism for some of his claims – including that Britain’s former colonies owe the Empire a “debt of gratitude”.

A survey of party members by the website Conservative Home last week put Kemi Badenoch in the lead by 55 points to Mr Jenrick’s 31 with polls still open.

James Cleverly, the shadow home secretary and seen as a more centrist candidate was knocked out of the race last month. One of his supporters, the Conservative peer and former Scotland leader Ruth Davidson, has predicted neither Mr Jenrick nor Ms Badenoch will stay as leader until the next general election.

She told the Sky News Electoral Dysfunction podcast: “I’ve now voted for Robert Jenrick, who I don’t think will win. I struggle to believe that the person that’s the next leader of the Tory party is going to take us into the next election in five years’ time and I struggle to believe that they’re going to leave the leadership at a time of their own choosing.”

Henry Hill, deputy editor of ConHome, said the contest which Tory officials decided would take almost three months, has not led to enough scrutiny – because the MP rounds of voting took so long.

“We know much less [about them] than I think we should”, he said. “The problem with this contest is the party decided to go really long, but at the same time, they confined the membership vote – with just the final two – to just three weeks, and ballots dropped halfway through that process.

“We had months and months with loads of candidates in the race, but also that was the MP rounds and you’d think the MPs will have a chance to get to know these people already. For the actual choice the members are going to be making, there has been barely any time to scrutinise that.

He added: “I think the party remembers Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak taking weeks to take lumps out of each other in 2022 and wanted to avoid that. But it means the two campaigns haven’t really been attacking each other and that tends to be how you expose people’s weaknesses.”

After 14 years in government under five prime ministers, it is not since David Cameron in 2005 that the party has elected a leader to go into opposition – with a long road until the next general election.

Veteran ex-MP Graham Brady, who served as chair of the backbench 1922 committee, told Sky News that the position was more hopeful than after the 1997 landslide.

He said: “The biggest challenge for a leader of the opposition in these circumstances is just to be heard, to be noticed. I came into the House of Commons in 1997 at the time of that huge Blair landslide.

“We worked very, very hard in opposition during that parliament, and at the next general election [in 2001], we made a net gain of one seat.

“Now, there is a huge difference between now and 1997. The Blair government remained very popular and Tony Blair personally remained very popular through that whole parliament and beyond. And in 100 days or so, Keir Starmer has already fallen way behind.

“So I think we’ve got a great opportunity. I don’t think we’re up against an insuperable challenge, but it’s a big challenge.”

Kate Fall, now Baroness Fall, worked with Lord Cameron in opposition and later in Downing Street when he was prime minister in the coalition government. She said the next leader needed to keep the party “united and disciplined”.

“The first thing is to think about why we lost. The second thing is what do we have to say? Then they need to be agile, they need to be reactive, but pick their fight, not fight over everything. They also need to get out and about,” she said.

Lord Cameron travelled around the country holding question and answer sessions called Cameron Direct. “When you’re prime minister, you can’t do that as much as you like. But as leader of the opposition you can get out, talk to people, we thought it was very trendy to have a podcast and so on.”

She says this week’s budget gives the next leader “an ideological divide” to get into, but warns that the next leader must not risk alienating former Tories who switched to Labour and the Lib Dems.

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The leader of the opposition will cut their teeth at weekly Prime Minister’s Questions sessions opposite Sir Keir Starmer and respond to set piece events such as the budget.

They will need to get the party’s campaign machine ready for the local elections in England in May 2025, Scottish elections in 2026 and the next general election expected in 2029.