Dominic Raab today pointedly hit back at claims by Ben Wallace, the defence secretary, that ministers knew the Afghan government was close to collapse as early as July.
Amid an increasingly acrimonious blame game between the two ministers, Wallace used an interview to claim it was known that the “game was up” in July and he was “arguing” inside Whitehall to accelerate the evacuation effort.
But speaking on a trip to Qatar today Raab, who was criticised for being on holiday in Crete in early August, denied that his colleague had taken a different view on the evacuation or intelligence assessment. “We were all working to the same set of assumptions,” he said.
“Ben and I were taking the same assessment throughout, until very late.”
