The so-called ‘special relationship’ between the UK and US is effectively over after America made ‘huge’ decisions about withdrawing from Afghanistan without consulting Britain, a leading Conservative has claimed.
Tobias Ellwood, chairman of the Commons defence committee and a former soldier, said many fellow MPs shared his fury at US president Joe Biden for his alleged strategic mistakes and for ignoring the UK’s ‘thought leadership’.
He told Times Radio: ‘There’s been a demise in the special relationship.
‘Why is it that we didn’t stand up and tell the United States, “If you want to get Afghans out — you have a duty of care for these people who will be pursued by the Taliban — you don’t get your military out first, you get the civilians out, then you retreat yourselves”?’
Former prime minister Tony Blair, who involved the UK in US wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, also lashed out at Mr Biden for the ‘tragic, dangerous, unnecessary’ withdrawal.
On his website, he wrote the US had ‘little or no consultation’ with the UK.
Mr Blair said he feared Britain would now become a second-rate global power and — taking aim at Mr Biden — added: ‘We didn’t need to do it. We chose to do it.
‘We did it in obedience to an imbecilic political slogan about ending “the forever wars”.’
But critics on both sides of the Atlantic accused the former Labour leader of blaming others for his own mistakes.
US TV presenter Keith Olbermann told Mr Blair via Twitter: ‘Afghanistan is on YOUR hands, you utter ass-covering fraud.’
Meanwhile, former US president Donald Trump, who signed the withdrawal deal with the Taliban last year, called Mr Biden’s handling of the exit ‘the greatest foreign policy humiliation’ in US history.
He told a rally: ‘This was a total surrender.’ He added if he were in power ‘we could have gotten out with honour’ because the Taliban respected him.
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