I watched Tom Tugendhat’s speech live. And it was hard not to laugh.
It was like a hammy second-rate actor delivering a Shakespeare soliloquy. He obviously had visions that morning of his speech going viral.. “the ONE MP who cares!!”
It’s all just pantomime in that chamber with these utter spanners
To be fair, at least Tugendhat has ‘walked the walk’, unlike the other dismal contributions, Teresa May, of course she never had power to build up British military capacity, oh, if only she had…..
Then the utter hypocrisy of ‘woke’ Labour and the SNP, the majority of them usually wittering on about imperialism and our foreign policy being the reason for extreme Islamism, makes me want to vomit. But,…. The only point is to show everyone how caring and virtuous they are, not to ever do anything practical.
Last edited 2 years ago by Andrew Fisher
Julia H
2 years ago
This entire debate took place without a single MP consulting their constituents about how many asylum seekers could reasonably be accommodated locally. We already have about 5 thousand people arriving illegally every week.
There doesn’t seem to be a single MP for whom stopping illegal immigration (let alone reducing overall immigration) is the top priority despite it being so for Tory voters and a top 3 priority for the entire country.
The migration acceptance, and encouraging, is deliberate to destroy UK, the Liberals so hate ‘Britain’ they seek to end it. It is a death wish pathology much like Anorexia Nervosa.
Another example of British fake democracy as if the response to the referendum wasn’t sufficiently revealing. Time for new parties to collaborate and offer disillusioned people a choice
Richard Stanier
2 years ago
Thanks for this piece, Peter, it’s easily the most sensible article I’ve read on the whole sorry spectacle.
Mike Doyle
2 years ago
What might usefully be said about our MPs performance?
Tired & emotional?
Drunk on their own self-impotence?
Fire (and don’t rehire) the lot of them and start again?
If we were to start again, I hear Ashraf Ghani is free.
Christopher Barclay
2 years ago
Caroline Lucas is an MP in a city (Brighton) with a chronic housing shortage. So severe that the homeless are dumped in places such as Newhaven. A housing shortage that she never addresses.
Christopher Peter
2 years ago
Thanks for a sensible article, one of only two or three I’ve read that seem to attempt an even halfway reasonable and considered view of the realities of this sad situation. Most of the political and cultural establishment appear to having a collective nervous breakdown, and the parliamentary debate was an absurd waste of time, full of impotent preening, virtue signalling and breast beating. The fact that the UK had already largely withdrawn from Afghanistan,a process that began several years ago and was largely uncontested until last week, and that there is at this point very little the UK government can actually realistically do beyond get our citizens and friends out, appears to have been studiously and furiously ignored.
Instead MPs of all stripes parade their unshakable prejudices and agendas – and what do most of their constituents actually think, and how much have they bothered to find out or even care?
And most of the MSM breathlessly reports all this grandstanding like it even matters. Even the Spectator seems to have lost the plot on this, full of earnest, admiring puff pieces about the various speeches that didn’t matter, made by people who few seriously believe would be have been able to do anything very differently if they had been in charge. In fact the Spectator website has gone downhill so precipitously recently, obsessed with Westminster tittle-tattle, that I invariable find that when I do actually see a decent, thoughtful article it’s actually from the printed edition – which I am likely to stick to from now on.
BTW – if you look online at the Spectator, you can see whether an article is destined to be in the printed edition – a very useful feature.
John Armitage
2 years ago
This was a fantastic article and it is so extraordinary that it seems to be a minority view
Mel Shaw
2 years ago
The debate (if that is what it was, there being no meaningful proposition on the table) was an utterly pointless exercise. A great deal of hot air to no purpose. Shameful.
JR Stoker
2 years ago
Really excellent piece, thank you. Nail on head.
Galeti Tavas
2 years ago
“Layla Moran, for the Lib Dems, called for a humanitarian corridor to be opened up to an international border”
Looks like Layla wants a million lone males with no applicable skills and a very different culture (to say the least) to be wandering the streets of London.
Germany has the best economy in the world, and has vast manufacturing and construction work and still struggles. London is coffee baristas and taxi drivers and no more needed.
Prashant Kotak
2 years ago
I’m just waiting for Keir Starmer to blame the tories for preventing the Chinese from walking into Taiwan. Well, either KS or the next Laybaa Leader but three – so within the next year or two I expect.
Ellen Finkle
2 years ago
What’s more, MP’s kept saying we have to save the Afghan people from the Taliban, as if the Taliban are from Mars. And that we had promised to protect them. Who? When?
Tony Buck
2 years ago
There has been a Contest in Unreality over Afghanistan.
Our MP’s, lost in an SF universe where Britain is still a Great Power (or indeed, a Power at all) are beyond hilarious.
But the tragic victors of the Contest are the Afghan middle-class.
How could intelligent, educated people possibly not have realised that on Leap Year Day 2020, Donald Trump handed them over to the Taliban in the Doha Agreement, with the full backing of his political opponents in the US.
Only the exact nature and timing of the catastrophe were left in any doubt.
Absolutely right, despite the frequent ludicrous suggestions on here that Trump would have provided the answer – no doubt by ‘nuking’ somebody.
Tony Buck
2 years ago
It’s difficult to see how a marginal military power like Britain, already defeated in Afghanistan, can conceivably return there to sort things out, as if we’re Yul Brynner and the Magnificent Seven sorting out a small clique of bad hombres.
I watched Tom Tugendhat’s speech live. And it was hard not to laugh.
It was like a hammy second-rate actor delivering a Shakespeare soliloquy. He obviously had visions that morning of his speech going viral.. “the ONE MP who cares!!”
It’s all just pantomime in that chamber with these utter spanners
You have summed him up perfectly.
To be fair, at least Tugendhat has ‘walked the walk’, unlike the other dismal contributions, Teresa May, of course she never had power to build up British military capacity, oh, if only she had…..
Then the utter hypocrisy of ‘woke’ Labour and the SNP, the majority of them usually wittering on about imperialism and our foreign policy being the reason for extreme Islamism, makes me want to vomit. But,…. The only point is to show everyone how caring and virtuous they are, not to ever do anything practical.
This entire debate took place without a single MP consulting their constituents about how many asylum seekers could reasonably be accommodated locally. We already have about 5 thousand people arriving illegally every week.
There doesn’t seem to be a single MP for whom stopping illegal immigration (let alone reducing overall immigration) is the top priority despite it being so for Tory voters and a top 3 priority for the entire country.
The migration acceptance, and encouraging, is deliberate to destroy UK, the Liberals so hate ‘Britain’ they seek to end it. It is a death wish pathology much like Anorexia Nervosa.
You are probably crediting liberals with vastly more intelligence and self-awareness than they actually possess.
They mainly come from social groups who’ve never really had to think.
Another example of British fake democracy as if the response to the referendum wasn’t sufficiently revealing. Time for new parties to collaborate and offer disillusioned people a choice
Thanks for this piece, Peter, it’s easily the most sensible article I’ve read on the whole sorry spectacle.
What might usefully be said about our MPs performance?
Tired & emotional?
Drunk on their own self-impotence?
Fire (and don’t rehire) the lot of them and start again?
If we were to start again, I hear Ashraf Ghani is free.
Caroline Lucas is an MP in a city (Brighton) with a chronic housing shortage. So severe that the homeless are dumped in places such as Newhaven. A housing shortage that she never addresses.
Thanks for a sensible article, one of only two or three I’ve read that seem to attempt an even halfway reasonable and considered view of the realities of this sad situation. Most of the political and cultural establishment appear to having a collective nervous breakdown, and the parliamentary debate was an absurd waste of time, full of impotent preening, virtue signalling and breast beating. The fact that the UK had already largely withdrawn from Afghanistan,a process that began several years ago and was largely uncontested until last week, and that there is at this point very little the UK government can actually realistically do beyond get our citizens and friends out, appears to have been studiously and furiously ignored.
Instead MPs of all stripes parade their unshakable prejudices and agendas – and what do most of their constituents actually think, and how much have they bothered to find out or even care?
And most of the MSM breathlessly reports all this grandstanding like it even matters. Even the Spectator seems to have lost the plot on this, full of earnest, admiring puff pieces about the various speeches that didn’t matter, made by people who few seriously believe would be have been able to do anything very differently if they had been in charge. In fact the Spectator website has gone downhill so precipitously recently, obsessed with Westminster tittle-tattle, that I invariable find that when I do actually see a decent, thoughtful article it’s actually from the printed edition – which I am likely to stick to from now on.
BTW – if you look online at the Spectator, you can see whether an article is destined to be in the printed edition – a very useful feature.
This was a fantastic article and it is so extraordinary that it seems to be a minority view
The debate (if that is what it was, there being no meaningful proposition on the table) was an utterly pointless exercise. A great deal of hot air to no purpose. Shameful.
Really excellent piece, thank you. Nail on head.
“Layla Moran, for the Lib Dems, called for a humanitarian corridor to be opened up to an international border”
Looks like Layla wants a million lone males with no applicable skills and a very different culture (to say the least) to be wandering the streets of London.
Germany has the best economy in the world, and has vast manufacturing and construction work and still struggles. London is coffee baristas and taxi drivers and no more needed.
I’m just waiting for Keir Starmer to blame the tories for preventing the Chinese from walking into Taiwan. Well, either KS or the next Laybaa Leader but three – so within the next year or two I expect.
What’s more, MP’s kept saying we have to save the Afghan people from the Taliban, as if the Taliban are from Mars. And that we had promised to protect them. Who? When?
There has been a Contest in Unreality over Afghanistan.
Our MP’s, lost in an SF universe where Britain is still a Great Power (or indeed, a Power at all) are beyond hilarious.
But the tragic victors of the Contest are the Afghan middle-class.
How could intelligent, educated people possibly not have realised that on Leap Year Day 2020, Donald Trump handed them over to the Taliban in the Doha Agreement, with the full backing of his political opponents in the US.
Only the exact nature and timing of the catastrophe were left in any doubt.
Absolutely right, despite the frequent ludicrous suggestions on here that Trump would have provided the answer – no doubt by ‘nuking’ somebody.
It’s difficult to see how a marginal military power like Britain, already defeated in Afghanistan, can conceivably return there to sort things out, as if we’re Yul Brynner and the Magnificent Seven sorting out a small clique of bad hombres.