UK’s Afghanistan exit branded a ‘humiliation’ by senior Tory MP – as final military jet returns home
The UK’s evacuation from Afghanistan has been branded a “humiliation” by a senior Tory MP and ex-soldier, who told Sky News there were a “litany of concerns” in the government’s handling of it that need to be addressed.
Tobias Ellwood, who chairs the Defence Select Committee, said the Foreign Office no longer had the capability to deal with challenges like the ones faced over the last two weeks.
Speaking hours before the last UK military plane arrived at RAF Brize Norton in Oxfordshire, Mr Ellwood said: “There’s been a litany of concerns that absolutely need to be addressed and errors that have been made as well.
“We need to recognise that this is a wake-up call, that the world is getting more dangerous, not less.”
While the UK’s 20-year military presence in Afghanistan officially ended on Saturday, there were some troops on board the plane that landed at Brize Norton on Sunday night.
Mr Ellwood said that British soldiers had “performed valiantly” over the last two decades, “but were let down by their political masters”.
“As soon as we’ve departed, there have been terrorist attacks,” he said. “And there will be further terrorist attacks because we’ve departed.”
Thursday’s suicide bombing at Kabul airport killed 13 US service members and scores of Afghans. The US has launched retaliatory strikes against ISIS-K targets – including a vehicle said to be carrying explosives on Sunday.
Mr Ellwood continued: “After 20 years, we are now out, and we have very little to show for it.
“We lacked the strategy, the statecraft, the patience to see it through. This manner of our departure is a humiliation.”
The last planeload of soldiers has arrived in the UK from Afghanistan
Tom Tugendhat, another Conservative former soldier, who chairs the Foreign Affairs Select Committee, has already indicated his intention to hold an inquiry.
He tweeted last week: “How [the Foreign Office] handled this crisis will be the subject of a coming [Foreign Affairs Committee] inquiry. The evidence is already coming in.”
Mr Ellwood spoke as Labour wrote to Dominic Raab, the foreign secretary, raising concerns about allegations that thousands of emails relating to Afghan refugees went unopened by officials dealing with the operation.
Shadow foreign secretary Lisa Nandy said her office was tracking cases relating to 5,000 people including “British nationals, high profile public figures, people with serious disabilities and children separated from their families”.
The government previously estimated up to 1,100 Afghans eligible to come to the UK were likely to be left behind.
“It just beggars belief that ministers have presided over such utter chaos when they had eighteen months to plan, with appalling consequences for many, many people who helped us over two decades,” Ms Nandy told Sky News.
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‘There will be many people who won’t get out’
The Foreign Office has not directly denied that the emails were not opened, but said other phone lines and inboxes were used to process applications.
A spokesperson said “we deployed a 24/7 cross-Whitehall team based in our crisis hub to triage incoming emails and calls from British Nationals, ARAP applicants, and other vulnerable Afghans”.
The accusations come after Mr Raab was criticised for remaining abroad on holiday as Kabul fell to the Taliban earlier this month.
Thousands of refugees have been evacuated from Afghanistan
Government officials have stressed they will now be ramping up efforts to help people trapped in Afghanistan escape to third countries.
Former senior army commander General Sir Richard Barrons said the UK now needed to start speaking to the Taliban and other countries in the region to get people out.
“We have broken faith with them if we now don’t move – as the prime minister said – heaven and earth to get them out,” Sir Richard told Sky News.
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“We have made a commitment, and we now need, in discussion with the Taliban and Pakistan and other neighbours, to get them out.”
Boris Johnson has said that any recognition of the Taliban in Afghanistan will only come if the new regime guarantees safe passage for all those wanting to leave.
An SBI Holdings representative told Cointelegraph that the company had not filed any crypto-asset ETF applications.
Homelessness minister Rushanara Ali has resigned after reportedly hiking the rent on a property she owns by hundreds of pounds – something described by one of her tenants as “extortion”.
That was just weeks after the previous tenants’ contract ended, The i Paper said.
Four tenants who rented a house in east London from Ms Ali were sent an email last November saying their lease would not be renewed, and which also gave them four months’ notice to leave, the newspaper reported.
The property was then re-listed with a £700 rent increase within weeks, the publication added.
In a letter to the prime minister, Ms Ali said that remaining in her role would be a “distraction from the ambitious work of this government”.
She added: “Further to recent reporting, I wanted to make it clear that at all times I have followed all relevant legal requirements.
“I believe I took my responsibilities and duties seriously, and the facts demonstrate this.”
Laura Jackson, one of Ms Ali’s former tenants, said she and three others collectively paid £3,300 in rent.
Weeks after she and her fellow tenants had left, the self-employed restaurant owner said she saw the house re-listed with a rent of around £4,000.
“It’s an absolute joke,” she said. “Trying to get that much money from renters is extortion.”
Sir Keir Starmer said Ms Ali’s work in government would leave a ‘lasting legacy’. Pic: PA
Ms Ali’s house, rented on a fixed-term contract, was put up for sale while the tenants were living there, and was only relisted as a rental because it had not sold, according to The i Paper.
The government’s Renters’ Rights Bill includes measures to ban landlords who end a tenancy to sell a property from re-listing it for six months.
The Bill, which is nearing its end stages of scrutiny in Parliament, will also abolish fixed-term tenancies and ensure landlords give four months’ notice if they want to sell their property.
Something Sir Keir’s increasingly unpopular government could have done without
Rushanara Ali’s swift and humiliating demise is a classic example of paying the price for the politician’s crime of “Do as I say, not as I do”.
She was Labour’s minister for homelessness, for goodness’ sake, yet she ejected tenants from her near-£1m town house then hiked the rent.
A more egregious case of ministerial double standards it would be difficult to imagine. She had to go and was no doubt told by 10 Downing Street to go quickly.
MP for the East End constituency of Bethnal Green and Stepney, Ms Ali was the very model of a modern Labour minister: a degree in PPE from Oxford University.
In her resignation letter to Sir Keir Starmer, she said she is quitting “with a heavy heart”. Really? She presumably didn’t have a heavy heart when she ejected her four tenants.
She’d previously spoken out against “private renters being exploited” and said the government would “empower people to challenge unreasonable rent increases”.
She was charging her four former tenants £3,300 a month. Yet after they moved out, she charged her new tenants £4,000, a rent increase of more than 20%.
In an area represented by the left-wing firebrand George Galloway from 2005 to 2010, Ms Ali had a majority of under 1,700 at the election last year.
Ominously for Labour, an independent candidate was second and the Greens third. No doubt Jeremy Corbyn’s new party will also stand next time.
In her resignation letter to the PM, Ms Ali said continuing in her ministerial role would be a distraction. Too right.
A distraction Sir Keir and his increasingly unpopular government could have done without.
Responding to her resignation, shadow housing secretary Sir James Cleverly said: “I said that her actions were total hypocrisy and that she should go if the accusations were shown to be true.”
A Liberal Democrat spokesperson said: “Rushanara Ali fundamentally misunderstood her role. Her job was to tackle homelessness, not to increase it.”
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Previously, a spokesperson for Ms Ali said the tenants “stayed for the entirety of their fixed term contract, and were informed they could stay beyond the expiration of the fixed term, while the property remained on the market, but this was not taken up, and they decided to leave the property”.
The prime minister thanked Ms Ali for her “diligent work” and for helping to “deliver this government’s ambitious agenda”.
Sir Keir Starmer said her work in putting in measures to repeal the Vagrancy Act would have a “significant impact”.
And he said she had been trying to encourage “more people to engage and participate in our democracy”, something that would leave a “lasting legacy”.
Politics
Rushanara Ali: Humiliating demise for Labour minister after a most egregious case of double standards
Rushanara Ali’s swift and humiliating demise is a classic example of paying the price for the politician’s crime of “do as I say, not as I do”.
She was Labour’s minister for homelessness, for goodness’ sake, yet she ejected tenants from her near-£1m town house and then hiked the rent.
Politics Hub: Minister’s resignation as it happened
A more egregious case of ministerial double standards it would be difficult to imagine. She had to go and was no doubt told by 10 Downing Street to go quickly.
Rushanara Ali reportedly hiked the rent on a property she owns. Pic: PA
‘A heavy heart’ – really?
MP for the East End constituency of Bethnal Green and Stepney, Ms Ali was the very model of a modern Labour minister: A degree in PPE from Oxford University.
In her resignation letter to Sir Keir Starmer, she said she is quitting “with a heavy heart”. Really? She presumably didn’t have a heavy heart when she ejected her four tenants.
She’d previously spoken out against “private renters being exploited” and said her government would “empower people to challenge unreasonable rent increases”.
The now former minister was charging her four former tenants £3,300 a month. Yet after they moved out, she charged her new tenants £4,000 – a rent increase of more than 20%.
Read more politics news:
Fact-checking Farage’s claims
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The report about the Labour MP first emerged in the i newspaper. Pic: UK Parliament
A fragile constituency for Labour?
In an area represented by the left-wing firebrand George Galloway from 2005 to 2010, Ms Ali had a majority of under 1,700 at the election last year.
Ominously for Labour, an independent candidate was second and the Greens third. No doubt Jeremy Corbyn’s new party will also stand next time.
In her resignation letter to the PM, Ms Ali said continuing in her ministerial role would be a distraction. Too right.
A distraction Sir Keir and his increasingly unpopular government could have done without.
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