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The Guardian
2 days ago
- Politics
- The Guardian
Ex-Tory minister says Afghan resettlement scheme was ‘most hapless display of ineptitude' he saw in government
Update: Date: 2025-07-16T07:09:49.000Z Title: Dan Sabbagh Content: Good morning. Normally when ministers make announcements in the House of Commons, we know at least some of the detail already because they been well trailed in advance. Yesterday was a rare example of a ministerial statement being used to reveal something utterly surprising and genuinely new (at least to anyone who had not seen the stories that dropped just 30 minutes earlier, when reporting restrictions were lifted). And this was a story about the murky operation of the Deep State. Here is our overnight story, by and Emine Sinmaz. Today attention is focusing on who is to blame. And two former Tory ministers are having their say in rival articles in the Daily Telegraph. Ben Wallace, who was defence secretary when the leak happened, has used his article to defend going to court to stop the inadvertent release of names being reported. He said: I make no apology for applying to the court for an injunction at the time. It was not, as some are childishly trying to claim, a cover up. I took the view that if this leak was reported at the time, the existence of the list would put in peril those we needed to help out. Some may disagree but imagine if the Taliban had been alerted to the existence of this list. I would dread to think what would have happened. Wallace has also been on the Today programme this morning, and he insisted he was not to blame for the injunction being a superinjunction. He said: When we applied in August 2023, when I was secretary of state, we didn't apply for superinjunction. We applied for a four-month injunction, a normal injunction. Wallace said it was the court that converted this into a superinjunction (meaning not just that the leak could not be reported, but the very existence of an injunction gagging the media could also not be reported). Wallace claimed he did not know why. In his article Wallace largely defends the decisions taken by the previous government, but Johnny Mercer, who was veterans ministers in the same government (but not in the MoD – he worked out of the Cabinet Office), is very critical of the way the whole Afghan resettlement programme was handled. In his Telegraph article he said: Whilst there will no doubt be a rush to blame the individual who sent it (I know who he is), it would be entirely unfair and wrong to do so. Because I can honestly say this whole farcical process has been the most hapless display of ineptitude by successive ministers and officials that I saw in my time in government, of which this poor individual was just the end of the line … The MoD has tried at every turn to cut off those from Afghan special forces units from coming to the UK, for reasons I cannot fathom. They also lied to themselves about doing it. The UK's director of Special Forces told me personally that he was offended and angry by my suggestion that his organisation was blocking the Triples. Certain MoD ministers had a criminal lack of professional curiosity as to why the Triples [members of the Afghan special forces] were being rejected when there were so many subject matter experts who said they clearly should be eligible. They even tried for a long time to say that Afghan special forces were not eligible. Mercer said the UK ended up letting the wrong people in. And the net result of this spectacular cluster is that we've let into this country thousands with little or tenuous links to the UK, and still some Afghan special forces we set up the bloody schemes for, remain trapped in Afghanistan, Pakistan or worse, Iran. I feel furious, sad and bitter about the whole thing, and do as much as I can to get through each day not thinking about Afghanistan. Here is the agenda for the day. 9.30am: Liz Kendall, work and pensions secretary, gives evidence to the Commons work and pensions committee. 10am: David Lammy, foreign secretary, gives evidence to the Commons international development committee. Noon: Keir Starmer faces Kemi Badenoch at PMQs. Noon: The Home Office is publishing a report by David Anderson KC into the Prevent programme. If you want to contact me, please post a message below the line when comments are open (normally between 10am and 3pm at the moment), or message me on social media. I can't read all the messages BTL, but if you put 'Andrew' in a message aimed at me, I am more likely to see it because I search for posts containing that word. If you want to flag something up urgently, it is best to use social media. You can reach me on Bluesky at @ The Guardian has given up posting from its official accounts on X, but individual Guardian journalists are there, I still have my account, and if you message me there at @AndrewSparrow, I will see it and respond if necessary. I find it very helpful when readers point out mistakes, even minor typos. No error is too small to correct. And I find your questions very interesting too. I can't promise to reply to them all, but I will try to reply to as many as I can, either BTL or sometimes in the blog.
The Guardian
05-06-2025
- Business
- The Guardian
This is not the answer to the threats Britain faces
The strategic defence review is premised on an increasing threat in Europe from Russian territorial expansion (Keir Starmer vows to make Britain 'battle-ready' as he unveils defence spending plans, 2 June). The lessons of Ukraine underline the reality of that threat. But there are other threats to the UK that require engagement across the world and that will not be solved by more drones and more bullets. Battles for territory and for political power beyond Ukraine result in death and despair for millions. Climate change, deepening inequality, poverty, famine and the displacement of populations generate humanitarian agendas that a country such as ours should respond to. They also constitute threats to us. We should not dispense with foreign aid to bolster a narrow perception of what we need to defend against. But what about cost? As Dan Sabbagh asks (Spending constrains Labour's defence review – but no harm in gradualism, 2 June), even if we accept the need to strengthen the readiness of our conventional forces, why do we need to spend more on nuclear weapons? The existing nuclear deterrent is dreadful in and of itself. Even if we are uncertain about the US's resolve, the UK and France could unleash mass destruction with what they have now. Surely we cannot see a scenario when we would need to, or choose to, deploy nuclear weapons on the battlefield? We should redirect the funding for more nuclear weapons in the defence review to overseas aid. It's not enough, but it does signal that we are not being diverted in our commitment to those in the most dire need across the world by the agenda of Vladimir Putin and his coterie in Moscow. Neil SmallLeeds Traditionally, we have seen our armed forces as being necessary to protect Britain's territorial integrity and safeguard our way of life and independence. As Dan Sabbagh points out, our territorial integrity is not under threat. As for our way of life and independence, there is no threat to this from Vladimir Putin: he does not appear to have any interest in the way we conduct our internal affairs, and even if he did, there is not much leverage he could apply. The same cannot be said for the American administration, which can exercise enormous leverage over our government and has distinct ideas about how it would like to influence our internal affairs, made painfully clear by JD Vance in his Munich speech earlier this year. Part of this leverage resides in the nature of the dependence of British armed forces on American equipment and support. Under the defence review, this degree of dependence will remain – we will be renewing our nuclear deterrent (missiles provided by the US) and probably buying more equipment from the US. Should we not be looking at decoupling ourselves from the US rather than exposing ourselves to pressure from a potentially malevolent government? Richard HendersonBristol One must presume that our 'battle-ready' prime minister did not read your exemplary interview with Neta Crawford last week (How the US became the biggest military emitter and stopped everyone finding out, 30 May), outlining her analysis of the true costs to the biosphere of an escalation in military spending. Or does not care. The economics aside, the political choices before Keir Starmer and all global leaders in this Anthropocene twilight of 'ecological collapse' ('Half the tree of life': ecologists' horror as nature reserves are emptied of insects, 3 June) are exquisitely stark. Either they devote their full energies to the climate emergency and so genuinely lead in attempting to heal an international system's self-destructive path to planetary annihilation. Or they reprise the last cold-war, nuclear-tipped, military confrontation of the 1980s and so, this time, seal it. Which is it to be? Dr Mark Levene New Radnor, Powys The prime minister proposes to increase conventional defence spending and bring back a form of national service to 'make Britain safer'. But documents in the House of Commons library state that we will be spending £118bn between 2023 and 2033 on our nuclear deterrent. If nuclear weapons aren't keeping us safe, what is the point of them? Why not spend this huge sum on social care, housing and other similar projects that would benefit the whole community. Most people would then be happy to let the prime minister have his soldiers, while life improves for everyone else. Peter Loschi Oldham, Greater Manchester Zoe Williams' description of sexual violence in war was a hard read, but a timely reminder, given the bullish talk flowing from the strategic defence review, that war is always an atrocity in one form or another (The story of war is one of kidnapping, slavery and rape. And what we talk about is strategy and territory, 2 June). The second world war ended with the atrocities of atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I support strengthening our defences to keep Britain safe from attack, but if nuclear weapons are part of that, let us remember that they are a deterrent, not an ConstantineGreat Gransden, Cambridgeshire
The Guardian
23-04-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
Russia-Ukraine war live: US and European negotiators head to London for peace talks as Russian attacks continue
Show key events only Please turn on JavaScript to use this feature Dan Sabbagh and Luke Harding report from Kyiv David Lammy, the British foreign secretary, will host US and European negotiators for fresh talks about Ukraine on Wednesday amid speculation that Russia has told Washington it might be willing to drop its claim to parts of Ukraine it does not occupy. The price would include the US making concessions to Moscow such as recognising the 2014 annexation of Crimea, though Ukraine's president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said no such proposal had been shared with him by the White House and that his country could not endorse it. The emerging US-Russia plan would envisage a ceasefire along roughly the existing frontlines once Moscow's territorial demand has been dropped, leaks suggest – something that Ukraine has indicated it could accept, as long it did not have to recognise Russian occupation as permanent or legal. Ukraine would be prevented by a US veto from joining Nato, a point largely accepted by a reluctant Kyiv. The only future security guarantees for Ukraine would be provided by a UK/French-led 30-country 'coalition of the willing' to provide a 'reassurance force', but this would not include the US. It had been hoped that Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, would attend the talks, but the state department said on Tuesday that would no longer be possible and that Keith Kellogg, the White House's Ukraine envoy, would be present instead. Share Show key events only Please turn on JavaScript to use this feature A Russian drone hit a bus carrying workers in the Ukrainian city of Marhanets early on Wednesday, killing nine people in a wave of attacks that targeted civilian infrastructure in east, south and central Ukraine, officials said. 'The Russians attacked a bus with employees of the enterprise who were on their way to work in Marhanets,' Mykola Lukashuk, head of the Dnipropetrovsk region council, said on Telegram. Serhiy Lysak, governor of the Dnipropetrovsk region, which includes Marhanets, in central-southern Ukraine, said nine people were killed in the attack, with at least 30 injured. Reuters reports Ukraine's emergency service said that there was also an attack on the Synelnykivskyi district in the Dnipropetrovsk region that injured two people and sparked a fire at an agricultural enterprise. Russia also launched 'a massive' drone attack on the central Ukrainian region of Poltava, injuring at least six people, the emergency service said in a post on Telegram messaging app. 'Solely the city's civilian infrastructure was under enemy attacks,' the emergency service said. Share Dan Sabbagh and Luke Harding report from Kyiv David Lammy, the British foreign secretary, will host US and European negotiators for fresh talks about Ukraine on Wednesday amid speculation that Russia has told Washington it might be willing to drop its claim to parts of Ukraine it does not occupy. The price would include the US making concessions to Moscow such as recognising the 2014 annexation of Crimea, though Ukraine's president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said no such proposal had been shared with him by the White House and that his country could not endorse it. The emerging US-Russia plan would envisage a ceasefire along roughly the existing frontlines once Moscow's territorial demand has been dropped, leaks suggest – something that Ukraine has indicated it could accept, as long it did not have to recognise Russian occupation as permanent or legal. Ukraine would be prevented by a US veto from joining Nato, a point largely accepted by a reluctant Kyiv. The only future security guarantees for Ukraine would be provided by a UK/French-led 30-country 'coalition of the willing' to provide a 'reassurance force', but this would not include the US. It had been hoped that Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, would attend the talks, but the state department said on Tuesday that would no longer be possible and that Keith Kellogg, the White House's Ukraine envoy, would be present instead. Share Good morning, welcome to our rolling coverage of the war in Ukraine. Here are the headlines … US and European allies will join their UK and Ukraine counterparts in London for the latest round of peace talks Leaks have suggested an emerging US-Russia plan would envisage a ceasefire along roughly the existing frontlines, with Moscow dropping further territorial demands, and the US recognising Russia's occupation of Crimea Ukraine's president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said no such proposal about Crimea had been shared with him, by the White House and that his country could not endorse it Ukraine would be prevented by a US veto from ever joining Nato, a point now largely accepted by a reluctant Kyiv A Russian drone hit a bus carrying workers in the Ukrainian city of Marhanets early on Wednesday, killing nine people in a wave of attacks that targeted civilian infrastructure in east, south and central Ukraine, officials said Share
