Keir Starmer made Boris Johnson squirm in parliament over Afghanistan

‘The prime minister’s response to the Taliban arriving at the gates of Kabul was to go on holiday’ – the Labour leader gave the impression he would have paid more attention to the crisis unfolding, writes John Rentoul

‘We are betraying the Afghan people, who cannot be left to the cruelty of the Taliban,’ Starmer said in the Commons (UK Parliament)

Boris Johnson’s aim was to get through the debate with as little damage as possible. A noisy, full and angry House of Commons put him on the defensive from the start. He allowed MPs to interrupt him, possibly remembering from pre-pandemic days that a prime minister who ploughs on refusing to take questions in a crowded chamber looks worse than one who appears confident enough to take on all comers.

But he didn’t have much to say to all comers, except that it was all most unfortunate, and that there was no “appetite amongst any of our partners for a continued military presence” in Afghanistan. Primarily, that meant the US, which signed a deal with the Taliban last year, but it also meant that other Nato countries were uninterested in stepping into the breach.

The result was what Theresa May, his predecessor, described as “a major setback for British foreign policy”, but there was little Johnson could do about it except to say that he was trying to make the best of it.