We can trust the Armed Forces to get the job done

IT HAS been over two weeks and we have been swamped by images to make us proud of what we are and which country we belong to. How awful to be shown something that suggests the exact opposite.

Yet last week we were shown a carefully researched documentary on the shambles whereby this country abandoned at Kabul hundreds of weeping refugees who after our 20-year occupation of Afghanistan were under sentence of death from the Taliban, roaring back to power.

These were people, mainly men, who interpreted for us, guided our soldiers in combat, explained, translated, and by all this saved British lives.

In their hour of mortal need we promised them sanctuary – then left them at the airport with weeping wives and bewildered children – in most cases because their UK visas were not ready in time. All other nations in the western alliance, with such dependents, got theirs out. We were shown the misery, the fear, the desperate pleas for help to board a departing flight. A plane load of stray dogs was allowed out but not those who trusted us.

So who was responsible? Here the programme-makers were restrained but what was undeniable was that it was another administrative cock-up.

For me the message of these past two weeks was blazingly clear. If you want something done with inch-tight precision, efficiency and on time, leave it to the Army, Navy and Air Force.

They ran up emergency Nightingale Hospitals during Covid in half the time thought possible. The farewell to the late Queen was mind-numbingly brilliant. If you are prepared to tolerate fiasco after fiasco, entrust it to the bureaucrats.

There is a pool of newlyretired service officers with talent and experience of making things run.

Liz Truss could do a lot worse than delve into this talent-pool to sort out our presently shambolic homeland.