The Foreign Office isn’t fit for purpose

Now that the dust from the choppers has settled, we are left with two abiding images of the West’s adventure in Afghanistan. The first is an American Chinook hovering over its embassy, rescuing staff in a botched evacuation. This debacle unfolded just weeks after president Biden promised the world there would be no parallel with the fall of Saigon, and ‘no circumstance where you see people being lifted off the roof of an embassy’.