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.

This was an important opportunity for Keir Starmer. It is at moments such as these that a leader of the opposition can make a mark. It was not a moment like the Westland debate, after Michael Heseltine’s resignation, when it seemed as if the prime minister’s position might be vulnerable; but it was a significant turning point, and it was important that the alternative prime minister give a good account of himself.

In my view, Starmer hit the mark. The test was whether he would allow Johnson to feel more or less comfortable. The prime minister, who looked as if he would rather be elsewhere throughout his own speech, tried to shrink into his suit even more during Starmer’s.

Not that Starmer had any clear answers to questions about what he would have done instead. He accepted that “nobody believes that Britain and our allies could have remained in Afghanistan indefinitely, or that Britain could have fought alone”. But he defended the British presence in Afghanistan over the past 20 years, which had “brought stability, reduced the terrorist threat, and enabled progress”, and said that the sacrifice of those who had given their lives “deserves better than this”.

He declared ringingly that “we are betraying the Afghan people, who cannot be left to the cruelty of the Taliban”, but all that he could offer was: “We have to use every tool that remains at our disposal to protect human rights in Afghanistan.” As those tools do not include replacing the US military deployment, such sentiments are mere platitudes – but as no one else in the Commons, including the many ex-soldiers on the Conservative benches who condemned the US withdrawal in vivid language, had any better ideas, this didn’t matter too much.

Starmer, never happier than when prosecuting a shifty miscreant, was able to make the prime minister squirm. He had some good lines about “the cost of careless leadership”. He did not need to dwell on the prime minister’s unwise words in the Commons debate on Afghanistan on 8 July (“no military path to victory” for the Taliban) to paint Johnson as guilty of “complacency and poor judgement”. He spelt out the mistaken calculation of the US and UK governments just 40 days ago, “that withdrawal would lead to military stalemate in Afghanistan, and that stalemate would accelerate political discussions”.

Starmer also proved his streetfighting instincts when he pointed out that Johnson had “failed to visit Afghanistan as prime minister – meaning that his last trip as foreign secretary in 2018 was not to learn, or to push British interests, but to avoid a vote on Heathrow”. He scored another direct hit when he said: “The prime minister’s response to the Taliban arriving at the gates of Kabul was to go on holiday. You cannot coordinate an international response from the beach.”

Starmer didn’t have an alternative policy that would have ensured a better outcome, but he gave a good impression of an alternative leader of the country who would have paid more attention to the problem before matters suddenly escalated to the ignominious humiliation of the past week. In such a difficult situation, you cannot ask much more of a leader of the opposition than that.