Government policy in a void

As Siouxsie Sioux once nearly sung.

Yesterday, the Foreign Secretary was subjected to a 90 minute grilling from a Common's Select Committee in what is just about the last vestiges of scrutiny left in UK politics.

And for 90 minutes Raab tried to speak without giving any information at all, thus avoiding scrutiny. Even the date he went on holiday was a state secret, or something he was detirmined not to reeal.

The UK was taken by surprise AND well-prepared.

Raab couldn't say how many UK citizens were left in Kabul but was sure numbers were "in the low hundreds", but wouldn't say whether that was 130 or closer to 400.

He balmed intellegence briefings, from the MOD, despite his department's own risk assessment from July said the country would be overrun. This was a document Raab was apparently unaware of.

But the only area of clear policy he spoke of in any detail was the lengths gone to ensure that mainly brown people, had to prove without doubt they were UK citizens and/or had to right to live in the UK. Safety wasn't a consideration, just ensuring that we didn't let the wrong sort of brown people in.

This was to avoid later claims in newspapers that we let lots of unvetted people in, dogma before safety. Pets before people.

This is the void at the heart of UK Government policy, enacted by Ministers selected because of the purity of their Brexit thought, or willingness to ignore their own feelings to be Brexity enough. Appointed not because they were any good at being MInisters or understood their briefs, but willingness to accept orders from The Cabinet Office, to deliver Brexit. Totally unsuited for a crisis. Let alone two, which is now three.

We got the Government we voted for, the chaos is on us, the electorate.

Well done us.

The BBC news bulletin at half five only reported on the failure of intellegence, not in the Minister but from the security services. What hope is there?