Global Britain

It was always a glib phrase, trotted out by Brexiteers to justify their Little Britain crusade.

But this week, and today in Parliament, we saw that Global Britain was only Global when it supports a greater force, and when that takes the unilateral decision to do something, the UK has neither the means of manpower to step in.

Apparently, according to Raab, no one saw this coming. But Johnson said today that the UK had been prepared.

Schrödinger's crisis, then.

The withdrawl of US troops had been arranged early last year when Trump, through Mike Pompeo, agreed to leave the country by the end of May 2021, if the Taliban didn't attack.

The EU27, UK and all other forces have had nearly 18 months to prepare. Prepare to take over the role that the US had, or to plan the evacuation of diplomatic staff and local aides. Nothing was done, so we had the horror of desperate people clinging to the undercarriage of departing planes, and falling to their deaths as the pane climbed into the skies.

Johnson had nothing other than a hopeless word salad to say in the Commons , kicking off a debate with no vote. The crisis isn't over, but the time to debate was a week ago, not today.

Both the PM and Foreign Secretary were on holiday as the crisis developed. For what they offered today, they might well not have bothered to have come back.

It is a failure on the scale of Suez, a setback in foreign policy and hard, projected power. Twenty years of support for a budding democracy, left to fend for itself amid a shower of broken promises.

You cannot impose democracy on a country that doesn't want it. An occupyng force is still occupying, even if its for good.

People wanted to believe, and we, the West, let them down. They'll never trust us again.

In The Commons today, the biggest change were the Conservative MPs lining up to critisise the Government and Johnson. But the own this, they supported Johnson, voted him to be leader, and so PM, even though they knew he would be dreadful. Reality of Brexit, COVID and now this have shown he was never the wisest of choices.

Elect a clown......