Raab: UK stands with allies to hunt down Islamic State ‘wherever they operate’

Published

3 years ago

August 30, 2021

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Dominic Raab is to hold a series of diplomatic meetings this week focusing on future engagement with the Taliban after the final UK troops pulled out of Afghanistan on Saturday.

The foreign secretary will host talks with other officials in a bid to find an international consensus on how to deal with Afghanistan’s new regime and to ensure the Taliban stands by its commitment to allow safe passage for foreign nationals and Afghans authorised to enter third countries, diplomatic sources said.

It came as Foreign Office Minister James Cleverly told Sky News it is “impossible” to say how many people are left in Afghanistan who are eligible to come to the UK.

Mr Raab will take part in a meeting on Monday with G7 members, Nato, Qatar and Turkey, the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office said.

Ensuring safe passage for foreign nationals and Afghans authorised to enter third countries is likely to be the main focus following a statement from the UK and more than 90 other countries and organisations which said these assurances had been received from the Taliban.

It comes amid fears that the number of Afghans left behind who may have been eligible for resettling is higher than originally thought.

Speaking to Sky News on Monday, Mr Cleverly said the “vast, vast bulk” of British nationals had left the country, but there are also people eligible under the Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy (ARAP) – which is for people who helped the UK’s forces – and others still there who could be under threat.

“We are going to continue working to get people out who fall into those groups – predominantly now, of course, it will be in that third group – people at risk of reprisals, whether they be high-profile individuals, of religious minorities or others who may be under severe risk of reprisals from the Taliban,” the foreign office minister said.

Writing to Mr Raab on Sunday, shadow foreign secretary Lisa Nandy said Labour MPs had 5,000 potential refugee cases in their inboxes and said the government’s figures for those eligible are a “serious underestimate”.

Mr Cleverly told Sky News the UK government hopes to work with the Taliban to ensure the safe passage of Afghans out of the country.

“We will judge the Taliban by their actions. They have made certain commitments about not taking out reprisals on individuals, about facilitating exit,” he said.

“Obviously we are sceptical about those commitments but we will continue working with them to an extent, based on their conduct, to try to facilitate that further evacuation and repatriation effort.

“What we are not going to do is just assume good faith in every respect – we are going to judge them on their actions, we are going to hold them to account if they fall short of their promises and commitments – but we are going to keep working to get people out of Afghanistan that need to leave Afghanistan.”

Other topics for the diplomatic discussions are set to include ensuring Afghanistan does not become a terrorist hot-spot and the need to prioritise stability in the region.

The foreign secretary will also emphasise the importance of holding the Taliban to account over human rights promises, diplomatic sources said.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s special representative for Afghan transition, Sir Simon Gass, will hold similar talks in Doha while the UK’s UN ambassador will discuss the situation with her counterparts from the four other permanent member countries of the UN Security Council – China, France, Russia, and the United States.

Speaking on Sunday, the PM said the UK will “engage with the Taliban not on the basis of what they say, but what they do”.

“Though we now leave with the United States, we will remain represented in the region,” Mr Johnson said.

“Together with our allies in America and Europe and around the world, we will engage with the Taliban not on the basis of what they say but what they do.

“If the new regime in Kabul wants diplomatic recognition, or to unlock the billions that are currently frozen, they will have to ensure safe passage for those who wish to leave the country, to respect the rights of women and girls, to prevent Afghanistan from, again, becoming an incubator for global terror, because that would be disastrous for Afghanistan.”

The UK government has faced criticism for withdrawing troops from Afghanistan.

Speaking at the weekend, Conservative chairman of the foreign affairs select committee Tom Tugendhat described the situation as a “sprint finish after a not exactly sprint start”.

Meanwhile, Labour have accused ministers of being “missing in action”.

On Sunday, the last remaining UK troops began to touch down in the UK after leaving Kabul for the last time, ending Britain’s 20-year campaign in Afghanistan.

It followed the departure of the last flight dedicated to the evacuation effort on Friday night.

Under Operation Pitting, the UK evacuated 15,000 people from Kabul in a fortnight – including 5,000 British nationals and more than 8,000 Afghans who worked for the UK and their families, as well as many highly vulnerable people.

Among those fleeing were approximately 2,200 children who have now been lifted to safety – the youngest of whom was just one day old.

It has been the UK’s largest military evacuation since the Second World War.

About 10,000 people have been brought to the UK under the Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy (ARAP), which is double the number anticipated this year.

Politics

Trump makes big promises about crypto in US — But can he deliver?

Published

8 hours ago

November 2, 2024

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Trump makes big promises about crypto in US — But can he deliver?

Trump is making bold promises to capture the attention of the digital asset industry and investors.

Politics

Crypto volatility may spike if US election is ‘too close to call’ —FalconX

Published

14 hours ago

November 2, 2024

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Crypto volatility may spike if US election is ‘too close to call’ —FalconX

An analyst warns that “volatility” could emerge if the US election results are close, but traders will be relieved once it’s over, giving the market “firmer ground.”

Politics

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

Published

16 hours ago

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.

Politics latest: Budget given ‘clean bill of health’

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.