The charge list is horrific: thousands of lives at risk from the Taliban in Afghanistan, a country the West already abandoned to medieval misogynists. Then there’s the gross incompetence of a British civil servant, a profligate £6bn bill for the taxpayer, and a seemingly complicit unconstitutional cover-up by both the Conservatives and the Labour Party.
That soldier has been moved but not fired, according to current Defence Secretary John Healey, who has also offered a “sincere apology” to those affected by the leak. Meanwhile, his predecessor, former Tory defence secretary Ben Wallace, has said he makes “no apology” for halting reporting of the data breach, but had no intention that the superinjunction that prevented reporting of the case should last so long.
But to what end? Healey inherited the mess. Ex-minister Wallace isn’t even in Parliament anymore, having taken up a job advising Saudi Arabia on reform, governance and security. At least he appeared on the airwaves on Wednesday to defend his decision-making.
The most famous case of political harakiri was in 1982. Following the Argentinian invasion of the Falklands, Richard Luce, then minister for state for foreign affairs, went to see Foreign Secretary Lord Carrington to resign from his post, but Carrington himself insisted on carrying the can with him. In more recent times, Robin Cook resigned from the cabinet over the Iraq War in a statement that earned him a standing ovation in the House of Commons.
“People came back to me afterwards and some said you should have resigned, and others said you shouldn’t. But for me, when you know, you know; it wasn’t a calculation. The information kept on changing, civil servants kept changing the story, and so I couldn’t go back in the House of Commons and do it again,” Rudd told The i Paper.
But there are plenty of cases where ministers have remained in post when history suggests they shouldn’t. In 1983, Jim Prior remained Northern Ireland Secretary despite 38 IRA fighters breaking out of prison on his watch, and 10 years later, on Black Wednesday, then Chancellor Norman Lamont refused to quit after his decisions cost the country £3bn in one day.
“Lord Carrington and Amber Rudd bear some responsibility for what happened on their respective watches. But the key point is this all comes down to politics. A minister who has the support of the prime minister is going nowhere. Equally, it seems wrong to pin the blame on the faceless civil service – if an error has been made and the minister isn’t responsible, then we ought to know who was,” Barclay told The i Paper.
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“The number of resignations has increased under recent prime ministers – a year in, Starmer has seen eight ministers resign. At this point in a premiership, that’s the joint highest with former Tory Prime Minister Rishi Sunak,” Durrant told The i Paper.
He added: “Most ministerial resignations since Margaret Thatcher have been because of personal misconduct, policy disagreements, or personal reasons rather than them holding their hands up and saying they made a mistake.”
On the Afghan debacle, you’d think several senior heads would roll. But in modern Britain, the age of falling honourably on your sword no longer exists, if it ever did at all. The public will likely greet this latest complex narrative with weary disillusionment.
Meanwhile, the Ministry of Defence believes 600 Afghan soldiers included in the leak, plus 1,800 of their family members, are still in Afghanistan. No resignation will help them now.
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