UK Election 2010: Don't Mention The War

By Steve Hynd

They dare not speak its name:

Strangely, the war in Afghanistan where British soldiers are being killed and wounded, and which is costing some �5bn a year, is not appearing anywhere on the agenda of any of the main parties.

It has scarcely deserved a mention. Perhaps it is because the parties all agree that British troops should be fighting the insurgency there. Perhaps they find it too uncomfortable to raise it despite the cost and growing doubts about the competence of the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai.

Perhaps it's because the main parties all know that stating their actual policy: "we'll just do what America tells us", might lead to the British electorate voting with their feet in droves.

It has provided the Stop the War Coalition with an open goal. Buoyed by a recent BBC poll which said 65% agreed the war in Afghanisan was "unwinnable", it says the amount of money spent so far on the Afghan conflict � �12bn � could pay for 23 new hospitals, 11 years of student grants, or 800 new secondary schools.

Anti-war campaigners are using their websites to encourage people to question their parliamentary candidates on their attitude towards the Afghan conflict. Not all MPs are reticent. Paul Flynn, anti-war Labour MP for Newport West, said this week he was featuring his opposition to Britain's military presence in Afghanistan prominently in his election literature. "The population is behind us", he said.

It occurs to me that we may well see something similiar in the US, where it's now Obama's war but the GOP are broadly supportive of his "stay the course" strategy. Afghanistan won't be a major part of the political debate if both parties get their wishes, so we'll have to make it one.

Update by Dave: I never need an excuse to post this clip: