The UK Prime Minister may have the regal touch in northern England, but he’s been wrong-footed on the constitutional challenges posed by the Celtic Alliance of first ministers from Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, argues KENNY MacASKILL
THE Commons was recalled a few days ago to debate the withdrawal from Afghanistan.
But, as some MPs implied, there is little point in debates such as this if the real bedrock of the British foreign and military policy is that this country will simply do whatever the US tells it.
From beginning to end the entire Afghan war morally and politically indefensible. Just 17 MPs opposed it at the time, and I am proud to say I was one of them, alongside Jeremy Corbyn, John McDonnell and Hywel Williams (Plaid Cymru) who are still sitting MPs.
The attacks of September 2001 became the pretext for a new era of US-led intervention. Twenty-five years on, millions are dead and the promised ‘victories’ remain nowhere to be seen, says ANDREW MURRAY
RON JACOBS welcomes the political lessons for today, about organisation and withdrawal from conflict, made by an erudite and conversational biography
Washington’s response to a downed jet shows a superpower still reaching for overwhelming force even as its wars repeatedly fail, says NICK WRIGHT
Outrage greeted Donald Trump’s suggestion earlier this year that Britain stayed off the front lines. But evidence suggests our forces were at times pulled from the most dangerous fighting — not by military failure, but by pressure at home, says IAN SINCLAIR


