Inside Politics: Chaos of UK’s Afghan evacuation revealed in damning testimony

Fresh questions are being raised about the UK’s handling of the Afghanistan evacuation amid claims that chaos inside Whitehall resulted in deaths. As the government kicks off day two of crime week with an announcement on prisons, No 10 continues to face questions over an alleged Covid lockdown party in Downing Street last year. Elsewhere, experts fear omicron could become the dominant strain within weeks and a Law Commission review has stopped short of calling for misogyny to be made a hate crime.

Our chief political commentator John Rentoul on what to look out for:

At 4am arrivals to the UK will be required by law to take a pre-departure Covid-19 test. Later this morning, the cabinet will meet. Dominic Raab, the justice secretary, will publish the prisons white paper, as this is crime week in the government’s media grid. The Commons sits from 11.30, with Treasury questions followed by the Nationality and Borders Bill, which will be a chance for Conservative dissenters to set out their alternative plan for safe asylum routes.

Coming up:

– Shadow attorney general Emily Thornberry on LBC at 8.20am

– Deputy PM and justice secretary Dominic Raab on GB News at 8.45am

Daily Briefing

LEFT TO DIE: Some two months have passed since the UK’s final troops left Afghanistan but the fall out from the disastrous extraction continues, with fresh details emerging of how chaos inside Whitehall led to failures to allocate resources, delays at critical times, a lack of communication – and ultimately deaths. According to one Foreign Office whistleblower, tens of thousands of pleas for help from those under threat went unanswered in a system incapable of handling the situation. Raphael Marshall, who worked as a desk officer during the crisis, described how for one afternoon in the middle of the airlift he found himself as the only one monitoring the Afghan Special Cases Inbox. Marshall’s damning evidence to the Foreign Affairs Committee paints an extremely dysfunctional picture of the FO and leaves Dominic Raab, the former foreign secretary in charge at the time of the evacuation, with some serious questions to answer. The deputy PM is out giving interviews this morning on prison reform in his new brief as justice secretary, but those exchanges are now likely to be dominated by Marshall’s devastating testimony as the Afghanistan story dominates the front of several news outlets.

OMICRON FEARS: Updates on the omicron Covid variant continue to come in thick and fast as cases rise. Sajid Javid, the health secretary, told MPs in the Commons yesterday that the strain, which it is feared is more transmissible than delta, is spreading in the community in several regions across England. Javid also admitted he could not guarantee the variant would not “knock us off our road to recovery” as fears grow over a fresh lockdown in the new year. Several reports this morning cite experts who say omicron is likely to become the new dominant strain in the UK in a matter of weeks. Some 336 cases of the variant have been detected in the UK so far, although scientists fear the true number is much higher due to time lags in data and poor testing. As few as one in 10 confirmed Covid cases are analysed for the omicron variant, health chiefs have admitted. Live pandemic updates throughout the day here.

‘UNWISE TO LIE’: Dominic Cummings never misses an opportunity to make life difficult for his old boss and has now waded into reports about No 10 Covid lockdown parties last year. Johnson’s former chief of staff said it is “very unwise for No 10 to lie” after the PM’s spokesperson explicitly told reporters “there was not a party”. Officials – and Johnson himself – previously failed to deny that gatherings took place but that position now appears to have changed, despite sources telling the BBC and other outlets otherwise. “Covid rules have been followed at all times,” the spokesman insisted as he said a party did not take place and declined to say whether an internal investigation had been carried out. When asked how he could be certain that no regulations were broken at the event last December, he said: “I don’t need to get into the positions we’ve taken. It is simply just a statement of fact”. A week has now passed since this story first broke and it appears to be going nowhere yet. Gary Neville, the former Manchester United and England international footballer, has written to a local Tory MP demanding answers on who attended the party. Neville says it is incumbent upon all MPs to “speak out against wrongdoing”.

‘REVIEW TOO NARROW’: An official review has stopped short of calling for misogyny to be made a hate crime, despite mounting calls for change following the murder of Sarah Everard. The Law Commission said sex or gender should not be made a “protected characteristic” that can be used to record incidents and increase sentences alongside race, religion and other factors. Following a review commissioned by the government in 2018, the independent body said the move would be “ineffective at protecting women and girls and in some cases, counterproductive”. Critics criticised the review as “too narrow” in its scope.

PRISONS PLAN: Tuesday is day two of the government’s “crime week” and new justice reforms are planned in the Prisons Strategy White Paper, which will be set out in full in the Commons later. All new prisons will be installed with “airport-style security” and every inmate will be assessed for addiction on arrival under plans to clamp down on drugs behind bars. Body scanners, biometric identification and drug dogs are among a raft of measures proposed to stem the flow of dangerous substances that “wreak havoc” in prisons and “scupper the work of frontline staff” in reforming offenders, the Ministry of Justice said. Yesterday, as Johnson visited Liverpool to announce a crackdown on drugs, a former Conservative attorney general claimed the PM’s plan to give the government power to ignore court decisions it doesn’t like would amount to “tyranny” and spell the end of democracy. Dominic Grieve, who was the cabinet minister in charge of the judiciary under David Cameron, said proposals reported on Monday were “worrying” and would see the UK “no longer living in a parliamentary democracy”.

“We are leaving nothing to chance. Our strategy is to buy ourselves times and to strengthen our defences while our world-leading scientists assess this new variant and what it means for our fight against Covid-19.”

Javid on omicron spread.

“The Govt says it needs a decade to sort things out. So what has the past decade been about?”

i columnist Paul Waugh on government’s crackdown on drugs.

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