The animal airlift: did the PM intervene?
While everyone was waiting for the Sue Gray report last week, “all eyes turned to the next scandal”, said The Spectator: the evacuation of ex Royal Marine Pen Farthing, his staff and animals from Afghanistan, in the days after the Taliban takeover last August. Boris Johnson has repeatedly denied that he helped in the rescue of some 170 cats and dogs, as thousands of people were crowding the airport in a desperate attempt to escape. Yet it has since transpired that his own parliamentary private secretary, Trudy Harrison, had emailed Farthing to tell him that he had the go ahead to proceed to the airport. She insists she was acting as a constituency MP. But last week, leaked Foreign Office emails appeared to show that the Prime Minister had indeed intervened to fast track some animals out of Afghanistan, said Tom Peck in The Independent – at the expense of people who’d risked their lives for Britain.
Hang on, said Rod Liddle in The Sunday Times. For all the emotive talk about animals being put before people, let’s bear in mind that the plane Farthing flew out on was privately chartered, and the animals were in the hold. Maybe so, said Jenny Hjul on Reaction, but Farthing’s vocal campaign to save his animals put considerable pressure on the Minister of Defence during a critical evacuation; and it’s quite possible more people could have been saved had “military resources not been squandered” escorting his pets through the airport.
My concern is not the rights and wrongs of assisting in the rescue, said Paul Goodman on Conservative Home. It is whether the PM lied about it. It could be that he did ask for the airlift to be fast-tracked, or it could be that officials mistakenly thought he had. But there is a third possibility: that civil servants were given orders not by the PM, but by someone presumed to speak for him. Let’s face it, this has Carrie Johnson’s prints all over it, said Camilla Long in The Sunday Times. She is the animal lover who had contacts at Farthing’s charity; and she is the one with the clout “to get private secretaries to do anything”. In fact, all roads lead back to Carrie. The PM has no real interest in throwing parties, or in £840-a-roll gold wallpaper; but Carrie is said to be “addicted” to parties, and has expensive taste. She has far too much power at Downing Street. If she isn’t running the show, why was she at those “work events”? Why did she present the PM with a cake in the Cabinet Room? Why do we keep hearing about her rivalries and purges? If she doesn’t want to cop the blame for the chaos at No. 10, she should keep away from it.