MPs find it hard to say who was to blame for the Afghan debacle, but they all agree it wasn't them

If the Taliban had wanted to send a death squad at least it would come as a surprise. So much better than worrying about it

- John Crace

I Suppose we might have guessed something like this would happen. In August 2021, the then foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, had moaned about the "sea being closed" while on holiday in Crete. The fate of thousands of Afghans who had helped the UK and whose lives were in danger as the Taliban homed in on Kabul came a distant second. For Psycho Dom, it was a simple matter of priorities.

So no wonder a government official and/or a soldier had been less than diligent with the names of Afghans at risk - following by example. Which one of us hasn't accidentally emailed a spreadsheet of more than 18,000 endangered people to someone who might pass on their names to the Taliban? Such an easy mistake to make.

Shortly after 12.30 and the lifting of the superinjunction, the defence secretary, John Healey, came to the Commons to give a statement on the data leak, the subsequent cover-up, and the news that a secret relocation scheme costing at least £800m, the Afghanistan Response Route (ARR), was being wound up. He might as well have been talking about the by now familiar Arse Covering Scheme (ACS).