I’d trust a soldier over a politician any day

Given a choice between a politician and a soldier, I would take the soldier every time. Soldiers can be strangely unworldly which is why, if they enter politics, they are taken aback by the lack of loyalty and the ubiquitous cowardice. Former soldiers like Ben Wallace, Tobias Ellwood, Johnny Mercer and Tom Tugendhat are trained to see men shot in the front; it’s the knives in the back they find hard to bear.

Yesterday, while soldiers were still trying to shovel up the mess created by politicians, there was an emergency video meeting of the G7. You can sort of imagine how it went.

Boris: Mr President, we understand the strain you are under at this immensely difficult time, but we do ask the United States to use her might to put pressure on the Taliban to extend the deadline for emergency evacuations from Kabul airport.

President Biden: Who are you?

President Macron: What we ’ave ’ere is a clair case of ze moral responsabilité. We cannot abandonner our Afghan allies. La France, she will be leaving Kabul on Thursday before le petit dejeuner if America does not extend za deadline with za Tali-banne!

Pres Biden: Tally who?

Boris: Tally ho, actually!

Chancellor Merkel: I’m sorry, but Germany cannot take any more refugees. My successor will not win the election if thousands of Afghans are peturbing Bavaria.

Boris: With respect, Angela, it might have helped if Germany had stumped up a bit more dosh for Nato in the first place.

Pres Macron: Boof! British Trump!

Boris: I know, let’s issue a communiqué saying we are

totally united in our commitment to making it look like we’ve done everything we possibly could, human rights, blah blah… Something about girls’ education? We’re entirely confident on our American partners to hold those Taliban barbarians to account… President Biden: Is that a cat?

But in Kabul, where stricken people know that darkness is descending, Jane Ferguson, Afghanistan correspondent for PBS, tweeted about what she had seen of our paratroopers. It made me burst with pride:

“The #Britishmilitary here at Kabul airport have shown breathtaking levels of toughness, professionalism and – rare in war time, I must say – compassion. I’ve been moved to tears by their actions, diving into dangerous crowds to pull visa holders into the base, guarding sleeping women and children, helping them find the right transportation to the US airstrip for their flights, pulling their own food out of their pockets and handing it to refugees, sleeping out on the cement, little supplies, parched in the sun.”