Labour calls for Dominic Raab to go after Afghanistan delays
Labour has called for the foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, to resign or be sacked after it emerged he delegated a reportedly crucial call to an Afghan counterpart to a junior minister last week while he was on holiday.
After days of increasing pressure on Raab over both his departmentâs response to the Talibanâs rapid takeover of Afghanistan and his decision to return from a beach holiday only on Sunday, Labour said he âshould be ashamedâ of his actions.
Lisa Nandy, the shadow foreign secretary, said: âHow can Boris Johnson allow the foreign secretary to continue in his role after yet another catastrophic failure of judgment? If Dominic Raab doesnât have the decency to resign, the prime minister must show a shred of leadership and sack him.â
In a tweet, the Labour leader, Keir Starmer, said: âWho wouldnât make a phone call if they were told it could save somebodyâs life?â
Labourâs home affairs spokesperson, Nick Thomas-Symonds, tweeted: âFailing to make a call has put the lives of brave interpreters at risk, after they served so bravely with our military. Utterly shameful.â
The Liberal Democrats called for Raab to go. Layla Moran, the partyâs foreign affairs spokesperson, said: âDominic Raab must resign today. If he does not, the prime minister should finally show some leadership, and sack him.â
The SNPâs Westminster leader, Ian Blackford, said Raabâs position was âcompletely untenable and he must resign, or be sackedâ.
The calls for his resignation follow a report that while on holiday in Crete, Raab was advised by departmental officials on Friday to speak by phone to his Afghan counterpart, Hanif Atmar, to request assistance on the removal of translators who had worked with the British military, as the Taliban advanced on Kabul.
According to the Daily Mail, officials were told Raab was not available, and that the junior minister, Zac Goldsmith, a Tory peer, should make the call instead. However, the paper said, as Goldsmith was not Atmarâs direct equivalent, there was a delay of a day in the call happening.
The Foreign Office said in a statement: âThe foreign secretary was engaged on a range of other calls and this one was delegated to another minister.â
But in media interviews on Thursday the defence secretary, Ben Wallace â" who has been privately critical of the role of Raabâs department over the Afghan crisis â" defended his cabinet colleague.
Wallace told BBC Radio 4âs Today programme that by Friday the Afghan government was âmelting away quicker than iceâ, adding: âA phone call to an Afghan minister at that moment in time would have not made a difference.â
Challenged on whether he could be sure about this, Wallace said: âI do know for sure, because last Friday what we were absolutely worried and unsure about was whether the airport would remain open.
âYou can speculate whether the phone call should or shouldnât have been made, but it wouldnât have made a blind bit of difference.â
Speaking to Sky, Wallace said: âAt that time, last Friday, those were not the problems and the barriers for us getting people out, the problem was about whether we could get the airport open, and whether people could be using the airport as the Taliban advanced. That was the block then.â
The report about Raab follows intense and often furious criticism of the government from Conservative MPs and peers on Wednesday, when the Commons and Lords were recalled from the summer recess to debate Afghanistan.
Across both houses, 11 Tory former cabinet ministers were among those expressing anger and frustration at Britainâs failures in intelligence and preparation. In the Commons, more than 30 Tory MPs spoke against the government, while only a handful voiced support for its actions.
Asked about this, Wallace said the parliamentary session was âquite rightly a real outpouring of anger, frustration, and sadness about what we are seeing on the ground in Afghanistanâ.
But he added: âI didnât hear alternative solutions from anybody, including my colleagues who were criticising us, except one. Some of our colleagues suggested that the British go back in again, as an army.
âI donât think anyone feels sending unilaterally in a single force of tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, of troops would be the right solution now. But apart from that, there was long on criticism and very short on solutions.â
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