03/06/2010
Simon Hoggart, political correspondent for
The Guardian dismisses the first PMQs of this parliament as having "all the excitement of a good game of cribbage". However, in a session that one could say was "nuanced", we saw â amongst other things - The Boy
take possession of the Afghan War in a way that he will come to regret. Thus,
we heard:
Afghanistan is my top priority ... we are six months into the troop surge ordered by President Obama. We back that strategy, and we must give it time to work ... we have to support that military strategy with a political surge, of which the peace jirga being launched in Kabul today is an example. I spoke to President Karzai about this yesterday, and stressed to him the importance of working towards a political solution in which everyone in Afghanistan feels that the Government of Afghanistan are a Government for them.
The current strategy of counter-insurgency is about trying to protect the public in Afghanistan from the insurgency and enlarge the area of that country in which normal life can continue. What is in our national interest - that is what we should focus on - is an Afghanistan stable and secure enough for us to bring our troops home. That is what we want to achieve ... we have to give the current strategy time to work.
For sure, entirely missing were some of the "biff-bam" soap opera elements, and the session was thus largely (but not entirely) devoid of the moronic braying that has characterised sessions fronted by Gordon Brown. But in its place was much material for thought and analysis, as we watch a new leader pave the way for his own political suicide.
That it was thought to be dull says as much about the brain-dead political
claque, represented by Hoggart, as it does the Cleggeron leader.
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