The Tories on Afghanistan |

Tuesday 17th November 2009 | 14:44

The Tories on Afghanistan

Conservatives dissent with the widely held view in Westminster that a fixed timetable should be set for handover of power in Afghanistan. They also predict that their party would be more committed to Afghanistan than the current government.

Last night Gordon Brown said that he hoped a London NATO summit in the new year would agree on a timetable for handing control of Afghanistan over to Afghan security forces, and that ideally the timetable would start in 2010.

The latest results from the PoliticsHome Phi100 panel of political experts and insiders reveal that the policy of a fixed timetable has support among left-leaning, Liberal Democrat and non-aligned insiders. Right-leaning panellists, however, are strongly opposed.

Setting a fixed timetable for handover was supported by sixty nine per cent of panellists on the left, sixty seven per cent of Lib Dems and seventy eight per cent of the non-aligned.

But a heavy seventy nine per cent of Conservative panellists were in opposition.

Politically motivated?

A Lib Dem panellist described the announcement as ‘a classic Brown fudge’.

A right-leaning panellist said: ‘it's a politically motivated, rather than military policy.’

How committed would the Tories be to the war?

Conservatives have a very different view to their colleagues from other parties as to what their policy in Afghanistan would be if they win the next election. By a margin of 67 to 22 they predict that they would be more committed to the war than the current Labour government.

Left-leaning, Liberal Democrat and most interestingly the non-aligned panellists, however, tend to believe that the Tories would be less committed in office.

Overall, forty two per cent predicted the Tories would be more committed and thirty seven predicted they would be less committed than the current government.

A substantial proportion (twenty one per cent) were undecided.

Will they risk US alliance?

A non-aligned panellist believed the Tories would be more committed, saying there was 'no sign that Cameron will risk distance with the US'.

A Tory parliamentarian predicted the party would be 'more committed to operations, but perhaps less to staying.'

A Lib Dem MP said 'I honestly have no idea - they haven't made it clear at all, I'm sure on purpose!'

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